"Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality," he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. "Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style," he said. "They have a different way of learning."- Rev Wright to the NAACP
Update: Rev Wright is speaking to the National Press Club. Rev Wright is cranking it up. He has his own agenda and is using the moment to run for something himself. He has the stage and he is not getting off. This is bad news for Obama and very bad news for the country. This is not the way that we want this election to go. I cannot say that I am surprised.
Obama has some problems.
__________________
Rev. Wright Delivers Fiery Address to NAACP
April 27, 2008 11:28 PM ABC News
Speaking in Detroit, at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 53rd annual "Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner," Rev. Jeremiah Wright took on his critics even while he spoke of a new, unified day coming.
You can watch the speech HERE.
Addressing a local Republican official who'd called Wright “divisive," Wright told the welcoming crowd in his keynote address, "I am not one of the most 'divisive.' Tell him the word is 'descriptive.' I describe the conditions in this country -- conditions divide, not my description."
Wright's appearance guaranteed more media attention for the former pastor of the Democratic president frontrunner, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, who likely had hoped the issue -- and Wright -- would go away. In more news that would no doubt trouble Obama, Wright mentioned that he was working on a book.
"I'm not here for political reasons," Wright said. "I'm not a politician." He said that might surprise in the crowd of 10,000 since "many in the corporate-owned media have made it seem that I'm running for the Oval Office. I am not running for the Oval Office; I've been running for Jesus for a long, long time, and I'm not tired yet."
Most of Wright's speech addressed the theme of the dinner, “A Change is Gonna Come,” talking about the differences between different cultures and races, saying "a change is coming because we no longer see others as being deficient…Different doesn't mean deficient."
"The black religious tradition is different," he said in comments that seemed to address the controversy about his sermons. "We do it a different way."
Wright discussed how different groups have seen other groups as "deficient." After saying English-speakers saw Arabic-speakers as "being deficient," Wright mentioned Obama almost as an aside.
"Please run and tell my stuck-on-stupid friends that Arabic is a language -- is a language, it is not a religion," he said. "Barack HUSSEIN Obama," he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator's middle name dramatically, "Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it's some disease."
The bulk of his remarks addressed, however, different groups seeing each other as deficient. He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. "Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality," he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. "Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style," he said. "They have a different way of learning." And so on.
After jokingly mocking the Boston accents of former Presidents John F. and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Wright said, "nobody says to a Kennedy, 'You speak bad English,' only to a black child was that said."
Wright said that he believes "a change is going to come, 'cause many of us are committed to change how we see others who are different."
Earlier in the day, Wright delivered two sermons at the Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, referring to his "public crucifixion," according to the Houston Chronicle. Wright will address the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Monday morning.
- jpt
Wright is a jackass...
ReplyDeleteI love him... he will make sure that the empty suited obama will never win.........
thank goodness...
The Reverend Wright seems to be stuck on 60 years ago.
ReplyDeleteRev. Wright has his supporters. Ray Taliefero at KGO has been priasing him all night long.
ReplyDeletepriasing, which is the Swede way of spelling praising, as in, 'priase the Lord'.
ReplyDeleteCall me divisive, but I see anyone that is taken in by these hustlers, Wright and Obama, as deficient.
ReplyDeleteDeuce
ReplyDeleteExcuse me for interjecting but I got back from the auto show last night and posted a final rejoinder to reader commentary about my Darwin post.
I will try to have part 2 ready in a about a week. Right now I am bushed and need a couple of days rest.
Very interesting posts over the last few days. Looking forward to some good reading.
Metuselah: Call me divisive, but I see anyone that is taken in by these hustlers, Wright and Obama, as deficient.
ReplyDeleteOkay, it's easy to justify why you're not voting for the other guy, now tell me why you are voting FOR McCain.
Talk about a straight talk express. The good Rev gave a barn burner of a speech at the National Press club. When you listen to his whole speech and if you reject political correctness, you will quite enjoy it. He is an unabashed defender of his faith, but he is political poison for Obama.
ReplyDelete"..tell me why you are voting FOR McCain."
ReplyDeleteI'm not. And there's very little for me to recommend McCain for anyone that might. I think McCain's advocacy for nuke energy is extremely flawed, as is the Iraq operation, as is the partnership and protection of Jihadis for oil, as is the open border policy, as is the current free trade policy, as is the slide towards big government/socialism/welfare.
The closest political platform which I personally identify with is that of the Libertarian Party. Unfortunately, they currently have Ron Paul as their champion, and until that changes I'm out.
"The Christ thou dost see
ReplyDeleteIs mine's worst enemy"
William Blake
Here's a list of Christs down the centuries, taken form 'Jesus Through The Centuries' by Jaroslav Pelikan, whose symbol was a pelican, a Lutheran theologician, raised Missouri Synod, but a man of his own. The list could be added to.
1. The rabbi
2. The Turning Point of History
3. The Light of the Gentiles
4. The King of Kings
5. The Cosmic Christ
6. The Son of Man
7. The True Image
8. Christ Crucified
9. The Monk Who Rules The World
10. The Bridegroom of the Soul
11. The Divine and Human Model
12. The Universal Man
13. The Mirror of the Eternal
14. The Prince of Peace
15. The Teacher of Common Sense
16. The Poet of the Spirit
17. The Liberator
18. The Man Who Belongs to the World
Jeremiah Wright's Christ seems to be a mixture of 17 and 18, with an emphasis on black, and maybe a rifle thrown in.
It does seem to point out how Christ becomes a mirror to those who look in, and is an interesting book.
Around here, we have the tchrist, the bobchrist, the whitchrist, etc., etc.
Obama and Wright are going to be uniters? The odds is slim.
And if whitey clings to his whitey church and rifle from bitterness, resentment, anger and failure, and fear of the other, pray tell, why does blacky cling to his black church and rifle but from bitterness, resentment, anger and failure, and fear of the other, one might ask Obama.
ReplyDeleteI personally don't think either proposition is true, but makes a nice question.
Finally, a vote for good sense and governance---by a court! Will wonders ever cease?
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.
In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.
It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush. But the voter ID ruling lacked the conservative-liberal split that marked the 2000 case.
The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy. Stevens was a dissenter in Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and David Souter dissented, just as they did in 2000.
'Ship of Death' still on the high seas---
ReplyDeleteLONDON – A floating arsenal of weapons and bombs dispatched by China in a rust-stained tramp freighter to the pariah state of President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe now is being shadowed by Britain's most powerful submarine, a nuclear Trident.
Freighter officers are desperate to be allowed to unload their cargo of 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades, 2,500 mortar rounds and three million rounds of ammunition for Mugabe's army, intended to be used to further cow the country's starving population.
But it has been turned away by dockers in the South African port who branded it "a ship of shame," as well as ports in Angola and Mozambique.
Now as it wanders around the South Atlantic, the An Yue Jiang, which began its voyage five weeks ago from the Chinese port of Ningbo southwards into the Pacific and across the Indian Ocean, the Beijing Ministry of Defense has been trying to find an African country which would allow it to unload the lethal cargo.
Intelligence sources in London have confirmed that secret approaches have been made to Equatorial Guinea, Benin and the Ivory Coast. But so far none has allowed the ship to dock and offload its weapons.
Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman in Washington, said: "We think that under the present circumstances and the current political crisis in Zimbabwe, now is not the time for anyone to be increasing the number of weapons and armaments available to that country. We will press African nations to refuse the Yue Jiang docking rights or to face worsened relations with the United State."
Naval intelligence sources in London have said the possibility "cannot be ruled out" that the ship could make the journey to Venezuela, whose maverick leader, President Hugo Chavez, has a good relationship with China and is an opponent of the United States
Where does Reverend Wright stand on the Zimbabwe/Mugabe situation? A pastor of a church with a primary allegiance to Africa must have a position on this horrendous situation.
ReplyDeleteVik, our esteemed commenters specialize in interjecting. It is one of the many things to which we excel at the EB. I look forward to part 2.
ReplyDeleteIf it has been thirty-two years since a flag was almost burned at a baseball stadium, what would be the value added in a bid to amend the Constitution to make that illegal? How about we concentrate instead on closing the "anchor baby" loophole in the 14th?
ReplyDeleteDOOM SPEAKS
ReplyDeleteFor Obama, the Voice of Doom?
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."
Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."
Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.
"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."
That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.
Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning.
His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"?
Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."
His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."
He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").
And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?"
Capisce, reverend. All too well.
The same racist demogogue that Obama courted is now doing his best to thrust himself into the limelight, to the detriment of Obama's campaign.
ReplyDeleteHard to think of a more poetic justice.
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ReplyDelete