Jeremiah Wright

Bill Moyers Journal More than 3,000 news stories have been penned since early April about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama.

And Obama needs this brought up again about as much as he needs a hole in the head, but PBS decided to do an entire show on Wright.

But behind the five second loop is a man who has preached three different sermons nearly every Sunday since 1972.

I think we have seen excerpts from all three. Isn't it amazing that Obama was there for twenty years and never heard any of it.

In his interview on Bill Moyers Journal, Reverend Wright discusses what drew him to the pulpit and the recent controversy

ABC News responds to Jeremiah Wright’s allegation that his words were taken out of context … by providing the context. And guess what? The context makes it look just as bad:

From "The Day of Jerusalem's Fall" 9/16/2001
We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak, the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo.

No we took it by conquest. That is not the same as terrorism.

Terrorism. We took Africans from their country

We did not enslave them. That was done by either other blacks or Arabs that enslave them and then sold them to the people on the slave ships. We just transported them back to this country. Keeping them in slavery was bd, but Republican President Abraham Lincoln freed them.

to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Granada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

We never intentionally target civilians.

We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hardworking fathers. We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child.

We were targeting Qaddafi.

Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock. We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hardworking people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they would never get back home. 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.

And by ending WWII quickly save millions of deaths on both sides that would have been necessary otherwise.

Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children from school, civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians

It is the Palestinians doing the terrorism with suicide bombers and rockets. Israel just wants to live n peace.

and Black South Africans

Oppression perhaps, but not terrorism.

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.

From "Confusing God and Government" 4/13/03

the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations.

True, but we have tried to help them more recently.

When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps.

Only during the war that we entered when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. The government put them in chains.

The government may have allowed slavery, but that is not the same thing as it controlling slavery.

She put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in sub-standard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.

All that may have happened in the past, but if you are aware of any institutional racism now, let me know.

The government gives them the drugs,

The government tries to stop drugs, it does not provide them.

builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law,

The three strikes law only applies to people that commit three different crimes (if you don't do the crime, you don't have to do the time), and people keep committing crimes, which is why we need bigger prisons.

and then wants us to sing God Bless America. no, no, no Not God bless America, God damn America. That's in the Bible,

What verse?

for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent. Think about this, think about this.

For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you've got 5 million blacks who out of work.

Should we take Oprah's money away from her and give it to those 5 million blacks? Each would get a few thousand dollars. What would they do with it, to improve their position in life.

For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you've got 10 million blacks who cannot read.

That is because they attend public schools. We need more voucher programs to let them go to private schools where they can get a good education.

For every one Condoskeeza Rice, you've got 1 million in prison.

Most, if not all, of whom are there because they broke the law.

For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat,

By a white guy, or another black? Or maybe a brown, red, r yellow guy?

at the Masters, with his cap, blazin' hips playing on a course that discriminates against women. God has his way of bringing you up short when you get to big for your cap, blazin britches. For every one Tiger Woods, we got 10,000 black kids who will never see a golf course.

And a larger number of white kids will never see a golf course. But all of them have a chance to work hard and excel wherever their skills lead them,

The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.

Ed Morrissey blogged In other words, we had it coming. We have no right to complain about terrorism when America is apparently the greatest terrorist state in history. Do you notice whom Wright never blames? The actual terrorists who had just murdered 3,000 of his countrymen. And talking about context, notice that Wright never provides any context for the actions against Japan, Libya, Panama, and Granada. In his speech, we just up and decided one day to murder Qaddafi’s child.

The government gives blacks drugs? This is the conspiracy theory that the Reagan administration’s CIA acted to flood American cities with crack cocaine so that the wave of violence it inspired would give the government an excuse to imprison black men. Somehow in that same thought, the government has conspired to keep black kids from golf courses. While it’s mostly true about illiteracy — in 2003, it would have been closer to 7 million than 10 million — Hispanics had a far higher illiteracy rate (44% to 23%) and illiterate whites were double the number of illiterate blacks (over 14 million).

Wright is a conspiracist, a demagogue, and at heart someone who doesn’t much like America. Like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, he spends his venom on the US and embraces dictators like Fidel Castro and terrorists like Hamas, whose screeds he publishes in Trinity’s weekly newsletters. Far from absolving Obama, the context once again forces Obama to answer for the company he keeps.

DRJ blogged Wright’s theme is apparently that he is being victimized, presumably by a right-wing conspiracy that wants to take down Barack Obama. It worked for Bill and Hillary. Why shouldn’t it work for Barack and Jeremiah?

Pete Abel blogged I’m anxious to see and hear the Rev. Wright in a more complete (and secular) context.

Gateway Pundit blogged Wright did not say if his racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American words in the church newsletters were taken out of context, too, or not

Taylor Marsh blogged Having Reverend Wright whining that it's all our fault is only going to hurt Barack Obama further. ABC attempts to bring Wright "beyond the bite," to offer context. Here it is: "Rev. Wright preaches on the alleged "racist" nature of the U.S. government." Swell. So fire it up, baby. Reverend Wright's greatest hits all over again. People will once again play the tapes and re-argue a point that the less informed and more naive, which obviously included Obama's fans, thought had been put to rest after Obama's speech... According to the Times, Wright also says the following a couple of times about Obama: "...he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. ... .. And he says what he has to say as a politician. ... .." There aren't enough words to describe the problem with this characterization about Obama's words versus his actual intentions, according to Rev. Wright. See the superdelegates sweat.

Uppity Woman blogged That’s right folks. We twisted his words. It’s all your fault. And it’s Hillary’s fault he said what he said too. He didn’t really say what he said. You twisted it! You twisted his twisted words. It’s really nice stuff, not bad stuff. You just are too stupid to understand Black Liberation Theology, dammit. No I mean GODDAMMIT. How could you twist all that loving stuff? You are despicable! Cut it out! All you goddamn Americans should apologize to Reverend Wright right now!