Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.
Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
And this:
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
Then this:
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).
Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."
We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.
My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.
Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html
Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
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Senator Barack Obama's Speech
I think Senator Obama gave the speech of a lifetime. I would equal it to one of my greatest heroes: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, the thing that troubles me about this whole race thing and religion is how easily it has been for white America to try and make blacks feel guilty for sermons delivered from the pulpits of their churches. Also how easily the media tried to hold Obams'a feet to the fire for not leaving the church because of those comments. Traditionally, that is not something blacks do. It was in those churches that we learned about the KKK and other marauding murderous white militiamen. It was in the black church that we learned how to protest during the Civil Rights Movement. That is where we learned about non-violent protest.
Had it not been for those type of sermons,(not necessarily the words used by Rev. Wright, but the fieryness) we would still be living under the rule of jim crow. I think the whole thing has been blown out of porportion. Had the members of the reverends congregation taken it seriously, they would have been rioting in the streets. They were not. Racism is not dead in this country, though we would like to think that it is.
In 1995, I was run out of business and driven to the point of near insanity because the town found out that I owned my business and was not running it for my white landlord. I lost a sizeable amount of money. When I sought legal help, I was told that there was not a lawyer within 100 miles of that city that would sue a white citizen for a black person. He was right. Fortunately, I had an excellent psychologist in Sacramento who helped me to not judge all of white America by the deeds of those few who had so damaged me. I am still struggling.
Despite the media's attempt to make Obama a mirror image of his pastor, because of association, Senator Obama is not racist, neither is his pastor a racist. Rev. Wright is a product of his early childhood in a racist America which shaped his views, just as they have shaped mine.
Senator Obama has sought consistently, throughtout this campaign to bring this nation together. He has sought to rise above the race issue. He has gathered an army about him that is truly representative of the fabric of America. He is a candidate I feel that I can trust and rely on. Not because he is black, but because he refuses to allow his opponent to drag him into the mire of underhanded deeds. The Senator is right, America cannot just walk away from the problem, it has to be openly dealth with.
Hear, Hear!! And, those red states (Blue collar) workers - most of whom are really hurting since they have lost so many jobs - may go on and elect McCainBush. The 411 is that if Ms. Hillary and her complicit smear deeds causes Barack this nomination, the African American community will make a mass exit out of the democratic party - thereby allowing McCain to walk right in and sit right down in that white house. So, Ms. Hillary if you think that you can just shock & awe the African American community in this manner -- YOU OR NOBODY -- you should have paid more attention to "Chicken George" of the movie Roots!!
If I take your premise as true, if that is what the African-American community believes is right, then that is exactly what they should do. I, however, don't think you can contribute any such move to an entire community.
Everyone from everywhere needs to search themselves, take views from many places and decide for themselves what is right.
Good points. The same is true about Ron Paul. He stated over and over again that the US foreign policy led to and caused 9-11. But the media just ignored it. Nobody made a big deal about it. When someone on the right says it nobody claims it is un-American.
Funny thing about that is Ron Paul was right.
Mr. Frank Schaeffer,
What a well informative essay. It brings to light the objective of powerful institutions like CNN, FOX, and others who continue to divert attention from the real problems that are facing America. It is even sad that there are more myopic consumers that are exposed to these dirty and shameful tactics. If news is to be fair and balanced, the said media outlets should have been also expressing John McCain denounce and distance himself from recent ministers (one from OHIO). But the is not their agenda to present UNBIASED NEWS.
Thanks for people like you Mr. Schaeffer
Great article ! You should write another on why the corporate media is not covering the Winter Soldier testamonies that I'm sure you watched a few days ago....thi
The Pentagon probably censored any reporting on the Winter Soldiers meetings. We've basically become a national security state and the Pentagon engineered a coup in 2000 with the military absentee ballots. The Pentagon and the Republicans know it and hold each other hostage. A coup is this country is easy as it doesn't take the whole country just a few key states and a plan to discount, prevent votes from being counted, not to mention the rigging of the electronic voting machines. Incidentally, it was predicted in the 1970's that the advantage of electronic voting machines would enable expeditious voting fraud, which has turned out to be the case.
What an honest essay, Frank Schaeffer. Very nice.
This is my observation: We have some serious issues facing us as Americans. A dire financial crisis which is forcasted to be the worse in decades; A never ending unjust war; An administration of crooks and liars who have been allowed by the mainstream media and congress to get away with every illegal and unjust deed they have done; An immediate healtcare crisis; a racial divide that only seems to be widening; An economic divide that is also widening; Veterans benefits being cut when their need for post combat treatment rises to staggering numbers (way to "support the troops"); A news media that ignores the REAL ISSUES in favor of frivolity and "entertainment". And all we can talk about is Obama's pastor and define and condemn him and Obama based on 20 second sound bytes and 2 minute clips on youtube! Wake up America! Our misplaced priorities are leading us down a very slippery slope.
Mr. Schaeffer:
Brilliant essay! What are the odds that you would be quoted by any one of those hatemongering whores at Fox, CNN or any other media outlets? Sadly, I know the answer.
Thank god for god damning. Preachers and poets have been doing it since they emerged in the modern rubble of social sanity. Take a look at our political poetry. The list is long. Use a search engine to find the long list under Political poetry. Want to see what poets are saying about 9/11 or the current war? Type in Poets Against the War. See all the god damning there! Dante, one of the most respected poets and leaders in the religious community, god damned his corrupt rulers into the rings of hell. God damning is good for the mind, the soul, and maybe even the body. Amen. We have a long tradition of god daming in all racial communities. As a country, someone has to express our rage at injustices or corruption or exploitation. The best of politicians have not been afraid to speak out:
Here are two quotes by Thomas Jefferson:
1. I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
2. If God is just, I tremble for my country.
We already walk a fine line of social repression. The media filters the news for us. The government tells us partial truths. The corporations steal our money and our time. We're pretty close to the edge of the line of not being able to rage against this administration & its institutions and structures without fear or guilt. What a pity if we become timid with our rant and the rage. Terrible things happen to us as a society when we can’t rage against ordinary people who try to convince us daily they control our lives. Look at the way people disappeared under Franco’s Spain, for example. Or Stalinist Russia. People are disappearing today in China, Africa, and even in Mexico and a few South American countries. That list of the disappeared is long. When we can’t criticize and rage, the worst of us gets repressed, and the society's imagination begins to shrivel. Great thinking and great works of art diminish. Rage is a cry for help. We have to embrace our rage. We have to look at why we rage. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. That holds true not only for the individual but the for the state as well. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Dante never ran for president either. Obama is applying for the top job in the country, if not the world, and damn it, I want to know if he is harboring a grudge against white America. This is a perfect example of the free ride Obama has had so far. Hillary gets trashed for not denouncing Ferraro with the degree of severity that they think she deserved, and place the bad light on Hillary, who never said the offensive statements in the first place. Now we are just supposed to give Obama another pass for the dangerous rhetoric spewed out of the mouth of his "spiritual advisor," of the last 20 YEARS!!!!!
I could care less what Obama's pastor believes, but I want to know, very much, where HE stands on the issue of white America.
Sometimes I get angry at the Clinton campaign, but my support extends to Hillary. I love the way this election process is slowly re-radicalizing her. I think she hasn't found her voice yet but she seems to be searching for a repressed voice that echoes something she lost--maybe as far back as the 70s. I hope she finds it. She’s got to stop acting like the playground bully, however. That is driving me crazy. Every time I want to swing her way, she does something stupid, like trying to set the agenda for the Obama campaign. It’s not her decision. She should focus on her own campaign and platform. I’d like to see her give the gender speech that matches the race speech Obama gave. Then things will equal themselves out.
By the way, here's what Thomas Jefferson said about luck: "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
"I could care less what Obama's pastor believes, but I want to know, very much, where HE stands on the issue of white America."
Which question he has answered ad nauseum. How many times does he have to answer it before the media & the not-paying
"This is a perfect example of the FREE ride Obama has had so far"...Why do people argue this point as fact? I would really like to know about this FREE ride that Obama has been on because as an African American woman, I would like a ride as well. He has been the first real viable African American candidate to ever run for the presidency that actually might stand a chance at claiming victory and this only comes after many months of people dismissing his whole campaign all together. The problem is that he has become a polarizing figure that no one and I mean no one can down play any longer. If anything he is the best person for the job because he comes from such a diverse background, not just racial but religious as well. America is so use to having people in office that think one way, not just in rhetoric but also in background. This country is made up of more than just one race and America needs to realize this.
Are you as interested in where Hillary Clinton and John McCain stand on the issue of Black America? Just askin'...
transcendentilist, Niether is Wright running for President. The point of comparison is between Dante and Wright, not Danta and Obama.
ldj, fear and guilt is their entire arsenal. Watch the right wing on this issue or any other. It's fear and guilt. He should feel guilty for staying in this church. Fear black rage. Any answer by a radical righter is infused with fear and guilt. No wonder they think everybody they don't like is a dangerous enemy of the state. The radical right spew has jumped the shark and it is old and tired. For them hypocrisy doesn't exist because there is always a qualifying position that makes it "different". They debate to be bullies, not to solve problems. They, as a minority, made the charge built on the "liberal media" and liberal colleges and all sorts of inequalities that they perceived. The problem is, they don't know how to lead. They have had the chance and all they do is complain about things like they were still a bitten minority. Patriotism and Religion are important to them because they are topics that are ripe for fear and guilt.
I wish Senator Obama had been a bit more consistent with this speech and the comments he made on Fox News.
From Fox News:
"When I saw these statements, many of which I had heard for the first time, then I thought it was important to make a very clear and unequivocal statement. None of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews. One of them I had heard about after I had started running for president, and I put out a statement at that time condemning them. The other statements were ones that that I just heard about while we were -- when they started being run on FOX and some of the other stations. And so they weren't things that I was familiar with. "
From the speech:
"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. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
When Barack said that Reverend Wrights statements were statements that he had not heard himself Fox, and then he said he had heard them in the speech, I found it contradictory. I wish he had owned up to Wright's comments earlier instead of acting surprised over them.
In fact, I wish he would have included in the speech something to the effect of, "I made the mistake that many politicians do when a press scandal hits. I minimized my knowledge of the problem, and tried to distance myself from." Then he could have gone into the section regarding not being able to disown Reverend Wright.
I also thought this line of the speech, "They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear," was a bit condescending to black churches and people who do not attend black churches. The clapping, dancing, and shouting are not what bothered people. What bothered people was that the clapping and dancing was in response to lines full of vitriol and hatred.
I wish Obama had spoken more about Jesus, and how following in his way can help one to overcome hatred, but overall I think he crafted a good speech that had many tinges of genius. He didn't take the easy way out and I commend him for that.
I have registered as a Democrat now in PA, (switching from independent) but I am not sure I will vote at all. I went from being a head over heels supporter to someone who worries that Obama can lie with a straight face. It is going to take a bit more than one speech to convince me that the pastor's beliefs about racism, and conspiracy theories aren't secretly shared by Obama as well.
I know it sounds crazy, but somehow I imagine Obama's pastor telling him, "It's ok son, you have to pretend to be what those white people want so that you can be elected. Go ahead and say what you need to say about me. It is more important that you get elected, than if my reputation is hurt."
Does anyone else feel this way, or am I overreacting?
Since you asked, I'll say "overreact
I'm not sure why this preacher's views are even an issue. Did Obama quote them? Did he ever indicate that he completely shares any and all views expressed by Rev. Wright? Is the core message of Rev. Wright's sermon really that problematic?
He was completely consistent. On Fox he said he had never heard those particular statements that were played over and over in the media. In his speech he said he had heard Wright say controversial things in the pulpit. He did not contradict himself and say he heard Wright say those particular statements in the videos. Pay attention.
Your'e over reacting,,, I usually slept through church when I went.
Clueless words as only Faux News can deliver.
Obama said he ewas present to hear controversial statements, not THOSE specific controversial statements that everyone is up in arms about.
Of course, Faux News junkies will of course assemble and contort the two into "He's lying!". Why? Because that's what Faux News junkies do.
genious.
The one thing you all are not remembering is that OBAMA is HALF WHITE.
The race issue is so stupid its mind numbingly stupendously retarded.
This is the one thing Hillary and Obama have in common.
They both were born childired to WHITE mothers.
Also, its true that Dick Cheney and Obama are distant cousins.
We are all the same, ignorant people its time to talk about it.
I think the biggest question is: Why are we hearing about this preacher man-- Now?
transendentilist, with your invoking the tired "whitey still puts down the black man" canard, you have revealed how your projection IS the problem Americans don't want to deal with.
Your reducing of Wright as just a "racist America hater", and another poster going so far to say that the "Black Value System" is anti-Ameri
If there are millions of you that have that much deep-seated contempt for Black Americans, so much so that even the most unusual of "African Americans" in Barack Obama can be reduced to be some sort of black Trojan Horse, a person that only exists to "Get Whitey" and "Hate America"..
Because somebody is hoping that this will damage Obama's chance for the nomination. Political attacks are about timing and research. Sometimes the research that you need for fodder takes a while to dig up.
So YOU are the guy that started all this religious insanity!!! You helped create the religious right, what the hell do you know??
And stop trying to spin Obama's association with a racist America hater. Enough already. I have been hearing about slavery and how whitey still puts down the black man and.......
Dear transendentilist (sic) --
Sick as you may be of the rhetoric that continues to put racism front and center in the debate over our American way of life, the racism still exists. I do not doubt that there is a vocal group that continues to hammer out this rhetoric for its own selfish ends -- namely, to perpetuate itself and to forward its agenda. However, I believe that the VAST majority of Americans would agree that they have seen and continue to see how racism affects them, their families, their neighbors and friends, and their communities.
Here's an example, and I'll try to be brief: I live in the Los Angeles community of Westchester, a formerly working-class neighborhood just north of the airport that has in the last eight years become home to more and more affluent young families -- mostly white, but also African-American, Latino, and Asian. The parents of students in our six public schools -- four elementary, one middle and one high -- all recently voted to create a semi-autonomous school district, a way to overcome the bureaucracy and frustrating inertia that has bogged down the L.A. Unified School District for at least a generation. In my information gathering as I prepared to vote on this issue, whispers of a racial divide spread throughout the community; the African-American parents opposed the separation while the white parents supported it. Without going into the background, except to say that years ago our local schools were opened to students from a neighboring, predominantly African-American, community and that triggered a "white flight" from local public schools and the advent of several non-denominational private schools. The vote went through and the separation was approved. I haven't taken the pulse of the community, but even the whispers of the supposed racial divide were enough to remind me that racism still exists in 2008 in modern, well-integrated Los Angeles. I wish it weren't so, and sometimes I feel resentful that we still have to deal with this, but I can't feel that way for very long. As a heterogenous society, we have to work hard to overcome our distrust of each other. Barack's speech today makes that point abundantly clear. I'm glad I voted for him.
I never said racism doesn't exist. I know that it does, but I take exception with the whole...we should feel sympathy for today's Afro-Americans because of something my great, great, great grandfather "may," have done.
Slavery is no longer a valid excuse. African-Americans have the same rights as you and and I. That's how it should be, but I'm not buying into that whole guilt trip and the rationalizing about slavery.
With the advent of PC (political correctness) racism just went under-ground. Racism is more than a one way street. I have been the victim of racism in the past, and I'm white. I have been attacked and beaten for being white. I don't blame all black people for it, but I will never admit that racism is only towrd blacks from whites.
Dear transendentilist (sic) --
Sick as you may be of the rhetoric that continues to put racism front and center in the debate over our American way of life, the racism still exists. I do not doubt that there is a vocal group that continues to hammer out this rhetoric for its own selfish ends -- namely, to perpetuate itself and to forward its agenda. However, I believe that the VAST majority of Americans would agree that they have seen and continue to see how racism affects them, their families, their neighbors and friends, and their communities.
Here's an example, and I'll try to be brief: I live in the Los Angeles community of Westchester, a formerly working-class neighborhood just north of the airport that has in the last eight years become home to more and more affluent young families -- mostly white, but also African-American, Latino, and Asian. The parents of students in our six public schools -- four elementary, one middle and one high -- all recently voted to create a semi-autonomous school district, a way to overcome the bureaucracy and frustrating inertia that has bogged down the L.A. Unified School District for at least a generation. In my information gathering as I prepared to vote on this issue, whispers of a racial divide spread throughout the community; the African-American parents opposed the separation while the white parents supported it. Without going into the background, except to say that years ago our local schools were opened to students from a neighboring, predominantly African-American, community and that triggered a "white flight" from local public schools and the advent of several non-denominational private schools. The vote went through and the separation was approved. I haven't taken the pulse of the community, but even the whispers of the supposed racial divide were enough to remind me that racism still exists in 2008 in modern, well-integrated Los Angeles. I wish it weren't so, and sometimes I feel resentful that we still have to deal with this, but I can't feel that way for very long. As a heterogenous society, we have to work hard to overcome our distrust of each other. Barack's speech today makes that point abundantly clear. I'm glad I voted for him.
Any presidential candidate that speaks of "race" when the Nation is sinking, is not worthy to be President of the United States!
"Hearing about slavery and how whitey puts down the black man"...
That says it all.
Dig a little and try to find the empathy for those who LIVED it.
"Hearing about it" would have been a welcome step forward for them. You "heard about it" because it was HAPPENING ad nauseum and little was being done about it.
I wonder who is actually bringing the "baggage" to this election?
Your comments are particularly unnerving considering this post is proof positive that true progress often comes about from first-hand knowledge of the flaws of those you know best.
You may as well be telling Mr. Shaeffer to go back to the wingnuts where he belongs.
Or, go tell the kids of high school dropouts that they are too tainted by ignorance to aspire to college, or tell the child of an abusive alcoholic to give up being a sober and loving parent for their children..
... or better yet, go back and tell our Founding Fathers to give up on the pipe dream of a constitutional republic because they were exposed to and indoctrinated by a monarchy and surely couldn't have learned from its' mistakes.
Don't lecture me. And don't moralize with me. I'm not the one playing victim here. And slavery hasn't existed in this country for over a century. It's time get off the guilt trip. I have nothing to be guilty for. I never enslaved anyone, and no black people I know are slaves. Just stop with the guilt trip, it doesn't apply.
i'm sure you are sick of it. I am too, but the truth remains that we can't just forget and ignore history and the fact that the playing field is not level and never will be in America on the topic of race and discrimination. Maybe you need to experience it firsthand and then you won't be so tired of it. I don't know your race, but most caucasians would love for all African Americans to "just forget" about the whole race/discr
Barrack Rocks - if CNN and FOX have missed the point, America will tune out. We are all angry, right now, together, for different reasons. If America misses the opportunity to have this man as our leader, we have truely lost our way.
I'm disappointed but not entirely suprised, by Frank's misrepresenting his father through "selective quotation. Obama supporters shouldn't cheapen their campaign by the adoption of such underhanded tactics.
http://the
Right. Clearly, you are better qualified than Frank to decipher what his own father's true feelings on America were. Because you don't like his conclusions, he must be using "selective" quotes to slander his father. What, you want him to publish an entire book of his father's quotes on HuffPo in order for you to take him seriously? LOL.
Please enlighten us as to where Mr. Schaeffer misrepresented his father. To not offer specifics is a mispresentation in and of itself, is it not?
Good points, Frank. The problem seems to be with news chanels like Fox and CNN, who need to fill all of that air time and so Wolfe Blitzer and whoever his cohorts at FOX are, foam at the mouth over a totally unimportant story such as this. This isn't even news. What makes it even more ridiculous is that everything the preacher said....wa
Then the media bring the story up again and again because that's what they do these days. They repeat themselves incessantly. So it comes out serving as right wing/Clinton propaganda.
I didn't hear too many complaints (none) when the MEDIA was gratuitously running the MONSTER story about Senator Clinton.
That was OK with you guys.
I am well aware of your double standard.
The story wasn't that Hillary was a monster but that the professor who called her a monster was fired from Obama's campaign. And how does Hillary get away with her "I didn't say it" attitude when all kinds of racist nonsense is spouting out the the mouths of her surrogates.
Number on: she is a monster.
Number two: the story was about the professor getting fired because of something she said which wasn't exactly untrue.
I used to be a Hillary supporter until she started acting as if she were holier than thou.
Spot on. For months the lunatics on the Obama side have been personally attacking Hillary because they have no other approach. Now they've dared the gods once too often.
If Clinton's minister had promoted hate-speech for 20 years while she was pretending to be the spotless 'uniter' - she would have been drummed out of the Democratic party.
Obama is simply the bargainer who makes whites feel we aren't racist on the public side while attending a racist minister's church for all of his adult life. The really amazing thing is that Obama has been a political animal playing the race card his whole life and for his minions to have had the arrogance to believe that this association wouldn't offend is hubris.
Kook-aid drinkers of the Obama cabal - Let's hear the 'judgement' accusation against Clinton again if you dare.
What a shame that Frank is still trying to get attention using his father's name and work. All one has to do is read the review of Os Guiness on Frank's book "Crazy for God" to know where he is coming from.
http://www
That review taints any opinion that Frank has about anything of substance that concerns theology.
Frank...I suggest that you go back and read The Mark of a Christian that your father wrote He writes of Christian unity and loving thy neighbor..
So you know his father better then he does?
From a book review?
Hey, Right -wing Fundamentalist nut-jobs don't need any proof *at all* to be delusional. That's just the way they are.
Because you have no intention on looking for it. You do not care what this man(WRIGHT) have done for the poor, people with aids, the homeless etc. He served in the Marines and during his generation segregation and racism persists. Your opinion and others dont matter because you wasnt voting for OBAMA anyway. This man has a clean slate so anything that comes up his critics throw at him every chance they get. The big DOUBLE STANDARD.
Here are some bones I have with the Christian Right.
http://www
You could not choose your Father. But Obama chose his minister, mentor and friend. He chose this minister for his own children. He also put him on a political campaign committee. A little way too late for Obama. Like 10 or 20 years! His speech he is giving today on this subject is just that. A speech. All words! His actions are what speak of his beliefs, not the speeches given on behalf of a campaign to win an office by getting votes from all Americans. This church, minister, and rhetoric may be acceptable to some. So be it. But it is not acaeptable to a candidate trying to run for President and be a voice and representative of ALL Americans.
Well said.
So potential presidents are not allowed to speak the truth? I wish that when I was growing up that I had a minister like this.
All my minister did was proclaim how lovely everything was. How gratefull we should all be. And in the meantime the bombs were raining down on Vietnam.
Since when did being a minister not include social awareness and activism?
Too much FOX(FALSE NEWS) dude.
Can you be specific? What exactly is the horrible message of this preacher that - in your mind - disqualifies another man to be a candidate? I'm just curious is all.
See, I didn't hear anything all that shocking in his speeches (at least not in the sections that were cited as controversial by the media). As a devout agnostic, I often switch on the ol' loony filter when listening to any preacher (it's a method to try to preserve the last shred of my sanity ) - so maybe I missed something. Did he condemn puppies? Or baseball? 'Cuz if you're alluding to his suggestion that racism and a slew of other problems are alive and well in this country and no amount of hollow "god bless America" lip service will solve them... well, I hate to tell ya - he's right.
But more to the point, I'm sorry to point out that the U.S. is not run by unanimous consent. It never has been, and hopefully never will be. No candidate will ever be a voice and representative for all Americans.
Hmm, is it appropriate to say "Amen!" to the agnostic???
I didn't hear him condemn puppies. Or baseball. Or even suggest wearing white shoes before Memorial Day.
"You could not choose your Father"
Obama said this the man is like family. It is true that you chose minister but when the relationship developed to the level of family then that is just what it is. I know people who whould not have chosen the family members that they are stuked with and i also know people who regard 'non-family' individuals at as high a level if not higher than family.
What i am saying is the talk of 'You could not choose your Father. But Obama chose his minister, mentor and friend' is crap. Blood or no blood, people can be family to each other and have inseparable bond.
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