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March 19, 2008

Barry's speech shows

... he's just a run-of-the-mill Chicago machine politician

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.
Wasn't it just a week or so ago that Barry was claiming he never heard any of Rev. Wright's [ahem] controversial remarks?

Yeah. Thought so.

Most of the speech reads like that.

Pity.

Posted by Darleen at March 19, 2008 06:59 AM

Comments

Wasn't it just a week or so ago that Barry was claiming he never heard any of Rev. Wright's [ahem] controversial remarks?

not true. you misheard.

What Obama said was that he wasn't present when Wright gave his sermon "damning" the United States.

This comment from yesterday is a general one about Wright -- not specific to a sermon.

Posted by: Brad at March 19, 2008 10:41 AM

Wrong. He specifically said he had heard some of Wright's "controversial" ideas preached. He either lied the first time, or last night.

Posted by: Chris at March 19, 2008 11:41 AM

He claimed he never heard the controversial remarks that are on Youtube and on GOP news. He never said he had heard some controversial remarks.

Thus he has heard controversial remarks, but not the particular remarks that have the wingnut brigades in a frenzy. This isn't that hard to understand.

Posted by: Josh at March 19, 2008 01:23 PM

Insert a second "never" after "had" in my second sentence.

Posted by: Josh at March 19, 2008 01:24 PM

I'll dumb it down a bit for the benefit of this audience.

Obama: "Have I heard Wright say crazy stuff? Yes. Have I heard him say this crazy stuff. No."

Posted by: Josh at March 19, 2008 01:27 PM

Josh

I agree, this is not hard to understand.

BOH: "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."

BOH: "And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube"

Josh: "He claimed he never heard the controversial remarks that are on Youtube and on GOP news."

Josh: "Have I heard Wright say crazy stuff? Yes. Have I heard him say this crazy stuff. No."

No amount of parsing will explain this away. It won't be difficult for someone to determine what Obama heard and when he heard it. Someone in the Clinton campaign is probably working on that right now. Is this the substance of your condescending argument which you so magnanimously "dumb down" for whose benefit?

Posted by: HughS at March 19, 2008 05:05 PM

My bad. I incorrectly wrote that Obama's initials were "BOH" when I should have written "BHO". I'm sure the Freudians will have fun with that.

Posted by: HughS at March 19, 2008 05:13 PM

Apparently it is hard to understand. For you. Not for reasonable people, however.

"If all I knew ..." clearly means "If I was you, voter, and this is was only exposure to Wright, I would blah blah blah." He's putting himself in the shoes of the audience. He's not making a factual claim that he did know of those snippets before the controversy broke. Obviously he knew about the snippets when he gave the speech.

A third grader could understand the difference.

Posted by: Josh at March 19, 2008 08:40 PM

You might be surprised at how quickly third graders can reduce a comment to its intended meaning.
You (and Obama) are simply using a rhetorical device to explain away something that most people see for what it is.
I refer again to Roger Simon's initial reaction:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/03/barack_i_didnt_do_it_for_this.php

Josh, reasonable people understand Obama's speech....it's his fawning, unquestioning acolytes that won't "understand the difference". For his speech to work, Obama has relied on the same principles that have brought him this far: ignorance and arrogance. Here's the opinion of a liberal that "gets it"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080317/ap_ca/on_deadline_arrogance

Posted by: HughS at March 20, 2008 04:14 AM

Nope, HughS, it's called reading the text for its intended meaning, rather than imparting an intended meaning you wish it had.

Citing a hack like Roger Simon doesn't help you any.

I made my case in plain English. You haven't rebutted it. You're just searching for something to hang Obama with. You failed.

Posted by: Josh at March 20, 2008 07:45 AM

Here's what bothers me the most about this whole flap. Obama claims to be a Christian. He attends a church for 20 years. In those 20 years, he hears literally thousands of sermons. Judging by the church's own material for sale, many of those sermons must have been laced with this Afro-centric liberation theology, which basically posits that blacks are victims of white oppression, and that Jesus loves them more because of their status as the oppressed.

Now, I am a Christian. I have attended several Protestant churches for about the same amount of time. I have never heard anything remotely like what came from the Reverend Wright in terms of anti-American and, frankly, racist screeds. If I had, I would have left immediately. That is not what I attend church for, nor is it what the vast majority of Christians attend church for. We are there to worship God, and we are there to fill our spiritual needs.

If Obama is actually a Christian, then this church must have filled his spiritual needs, or he would have found another church that would. That he did not can only mean one of two things. Either he agreed with the Afro-centric liberation theology preached there, which makes him a black first and an American second, in which case his post-racial campaign is a sordid scam, or he just inhabited a pew when it was convenient in order to pass himself off as a Christian, which is not unusual in a politician, but would be somewhat upsetting in a politician who claimed to be cut from different cloth.

Which of these two is Obama?

Posted by: Chris at March 21, 2008 09:24 AM