With Friends Like These....

When the history of campaign 2008 is written, we may look back at this moment and deem it was the beginning of the end of Barack Obama’s hope of becoming president.

Bill Clinton’s comments in South Carolina notwithstanding, until now Obama managed to transcend race for the most part, which may be the true “third rail” of American politics.

That part of the campaign is now only visible in the rear view mirror. Cable news and YouTube are in the midst of a feeding frenzy with video clips of Obama’s minister Jeremiah Wright making some extremely disturbing statements in his sermons.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001:

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Promoting Obama's candidacy in a sermon last December:

"Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger."

Obama tried to put some distance between himself and his pastor, but you have to admire him for not dumping his longtime friend like a wet rag, which is what most politicians would have done.

"I have to confess that those are not statements I ever heard when I was sitting in the pews at this church,” Obama said. “These are a series of incendiary statements that I can't object to strongly enough. Had I heard those in the church, I would have told Reverend that I profoundly disagreed with them. They didn't reflect my values and they didn't reflect my ideals."

Political calculations may have played a role in addition to loyalty. The massive turnout and support Obama is getting from African American votes might be affected if he were to renounce the man as well as the message.


Wright has been a friend and spiritual advisor to Obama for at least 20 years, so it’s a bit difficult to believe that Obama never heard any of these types of very disturbing pronouncements from the pulpit.

A lot of white people who take some pride in voting for a black man who has a real shot at becoming president may start having second thoughts if these are the views of someone who clearly has a lot of influence with Obama.

Obama offers the promise of moving beyond the old racial divisions but Wright’s rhetoric threatens to embroil us all in the same old angry polemics that does little to address the problems of race in the United States in a meaningful way.

Citizens of Obama Nation have a dream, but Jeremiah Wright now threatens to turn it into a nightmare.