Sunday, June 01, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Barack Obama Leaves His Church

Barack Obama's initial attempts to deal with toxic controversy exploding out of the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ were metaphorical band aids, followed by scalpel cuts. Yesterday, efforts were upgraded to outright amputation.

Obama's letter generally strikes the right tone - sad, mildly and vaguely rebuking for Wright and Pfleger's comments (without much sense of rebuke for those who gave it wild applause). In Obama's comments to reporters, he sounds a bit like the traditional breakup line — "it's not you, it's me."

...My interest has never been to try to politicize this or put the church in a position where is subject to the same rigors and demands of a presidential campaign. My suspicion at that time, and Michelle, I think, shared this concern, was that it was going to be very difficult to continue our membership there so long as I was running for president. The recent episode with Father Pfleger I think just reinforced that view that we don't want to have to answer for everything that’s stated in a church. On the other hand, we also don't want a church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes. I mean, that’s … I don't want Reverend Moss to have to look over his shoulder and see that his sermon vets or if it’s potentially problematic for my campaign or will attract the fury of a cable program. And so, I have no idea how it will impact my presidential campaign. But I know it's the right thing to do for the church and for our family.

But several problems remain.

When the first Wright videos surfaced, Hillary Clinton said, "he would not have been my pastor," and suggested she would not have remained in that church if she had heard Wright's comments, and Obama's defenders whacked her around like a piñata for inflaming the issue. Now Obama has done, much later, exactly what she said she would have done. Was she right, long before he was? Is it inevitable that anyone who seeks to lead all of the American people would have to cut ties to a church where Wright and Pfleger vent their fury?

One of the core messages of Obama's Philadelphia speech, praised to the high heavens by the chattering classes, was "this isn't what it looks like; you don't know these people the way I do." He criticized those who came to conclusions based on "snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube," and felt that Trinity United was being caricatured by some commentators. He argued against dismissing "Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue."

And then Wright went before the National Press Club (as well as the Detroit NAACP), and persuaded the nation that he was a crank and a demagogue.

But, perhaps, those who wanted to give Obama every benefit of the doubt could persuade themselves that he indeed had been absent for every fiery sermon. One man does not make a church, and perhaps Trinity United was a lovely church with a bad pastor - the raucous applause for Wright's most furious statements, and Wright's successor's own controversial remarks notwithstanding.

And then Pfleger went up there, knowing that the sermon is broadcast, knowing that the world was watching... and he mimicked Wright's style, suggesting that Hillary Clinton was driven by a sense of white privilege, and argued that whites who wished to be cleansed of the racist sins of their ancestors had to give up their 401(k) accounts. And again, if anyone in the flock objected, it was hard to tell.

Barack Obama has indicated in the past that he knows "white" and "rich" are not synonyms. But two of Obama's most prominent and oft-cited spiritual mentors get up before an overwhelmingly African-American flock and using those words interchangeably. Obama's cratering support in Kentucky and West Virginia becomes even clearer - poor whites don't like hearing how easy they have it and how privileged they are, and perhaps look skeptically on candidates who hang around those who believe that.

Since Wright appeared, we kept hearing from Obama and his defenders, "no, you're wrong, you just don't know this church and its leaders the way he is, your judgment is faulty, he's right." And now, definitively, he has conceded that he was wrong, about both Wright and the church. 

06/01 02:10 PMShare