Hillary Clinton and the Wright Controversy: Into the Fire

Well for what its worth I 100 percent totally agree. That has been the issue all along.

Poor judgment on his part. He sat in the pews for 20 years and either:

1. Daydreamed and contemplated what he was going to do when church let out or
2. Shouted hallelujah with the rest of them.

I tend to think he is a typical church goer who goes to church on sunday and after the dinner when you ask them what the pastor talked about it was

God.

Which brings into question his faith. He just can't win. No matter what spin you try to put on this he just collapses under the weight of bad judgment or suspect faith. Could it be his faith is not as strong as he is pretending.

I hear the hush come over the crowd. No we all know hes a very faithful christian. Then if thats the case why wasnt he listening. Well he was but he didnt inhale. If thats the case then why did he sit there for 20 years silently........and on and on and on the vicious circle goes.

He is in a cut his loses and run situation right now. Its like everyones trying to call Hillary a liar for saying suspect things about a single incident in Tuzla 13 years ago. One incident 13 years ago vs. sitting in the pews for 20 years.

The two do not equate. Nice try though.

Whocares,

Like Caroline Glick, you assume there was 20 years of bad behavior on Wright's part. But there's no evidence that was the case.

In fact, by all accounts, bad behavior was NOT the hallmark of this church nor of Rev. Wright, which was precisely the point of one of my posts yesterday.

Or maybe I'm overly complicating this. Maybe you're a member of the "double standard squared" club?

I am not sure what Sen Clinton's comment intended to accomplish. It just seemed petty and small just as Samantha Power's comment about Clinton was petty and small, and Carville's comments about Richardson as Judas was petty and small.

I give the benefit of the doubt to Obama that the part of Rev Wright's personality with which he did not agree was tiny compared to his capacity for inspiration.

Everyone, under scrutiny, is tainted.

"Everyone, under scrutiny, is tainted."

Wow. That's a great line, Paul. Your own? Can I quote you on that?

The thing about Billary's comment is the cavalier use of a military situation. Many on the Left complain about Iraq and W's use of military photo-ops. Could Billary's administration be four more years of Jessica Lynch and politicalization(sp) of GWOT?

Barack Obama's church is scrambling to undo the impression it is a ministry for blacks only with a radical message. The Web site of the Trinity United Church of Christ has been purged of a section which spoke of the church's endorsement of — "black ethics" that — "must be taught and exemplified....wherever blacks are gathered."

Among those black ethics are "commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, disavowal of the pursuit of middleclassness and allegiance to all black leadership who espouse and embrace the black value system."

The Media Research Center notes that in place of these words now are video clips from church members, including one from a white church official who said she feels at home at Trinity.

Britt Hume.

The Web site for the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago had described its congregation as “unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian” but has made changes to the “About Us” section.

The section no longer contains the “Black Value System.” It has been replaced with videotaped testimonials by church members.

I can go on and on and on. I can actually go back to the days of their original website in which it was pretty rough and pretty much

http://www.tucc.org/about.htm

People will believe what they want to believe. I for one do believe that this church has always preached these types of messages based upon the extremely professional makeover they have recently received.

I agree with Whocares' point about the TUCC website getting scrubbed- doesn't pass the sniff test.

There's also the fact that TUCC produced the DVD's as a montage of Wright's best sermons- the selection of the sermons that produced the YouTube clips wasn't by one of Obama's political opponents, it was by the church.

And, when Wright went on Fox, his main defense was to ask the interviewers whether or not they were familiar with the writings on black liberation theology by James Cone. He doesn't distance himself from that entire theology, in fact he uses it to defend his preaching as part of a larger movement.

Plus, there's something really troubling about the way the audience reacted to the more controversial statements, like when he talks about AIDS in the context of the Tuskegee experiments. I found it uncomfortable to note how the congregants reacted, as though it was a foregone conclusion that his conspiracy theory was factual. And then when I saw a comment on another blog that pointed to this:
http://www.prb.org/Articles/2005/ConspiracyBeli... I was frankly, outraged. How can it possibly be condoned for a man to fearmonger about this when it is so obviously spreading ideas that are harmful to the black community? I think most people agree that it's troubling that so many Americans believe that there was a direct relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda, and people attribute varying degrees of responsibility to the Bush administration for putting that idea in people's minds. How, then, can Rev. Wright be absolved so easily for his campaign of misinformation that is so harmful?

CStanley,

Web sites are updated all the time. I think you and Whocares are looking much too hard for a conspiracy that doesn't exist. Furthermore, as I recall, Cone has acknowledged that TUCC followed his philosophies, but did so in such a way that was conductive to bridging racial divides. In fact, from what I've read of Cone's philosophies, the overwhelming majority of it is about instilling pride in "oppressed" peoples, in this case, Blacks. While some of it could be construed as destructive, so can some of the Koran, so can some of the Judeo-Christian Bible. It's how you act on the philosophies that counts, and again, the track record of this Church in terms of being a positive force in South Side Chicago affairs is very impressive, very productive. Finally, on the AIDS myth, I'd agree its irresponsible and foolish -- but hardly more foolish than believing the current Administration's abstinence-only preference for sex education will do anything to promote healthy sexual behaviors. Besides, the AIDS conspiracy foolishness of Wright's is the least important "soundbite" in this entire discussion -- that's the cranky old Uncle talking, nothing more.

I don't understand your last sentence at all. Given that information, that the CDC and other experts clearly think that the conspiracy fears among blacks are contributing to the high rates of infection for blacks, and hampering their ability to educate about prevention, I don't see how you can be so dismissive of that particular "soundbite".

Yes, it's how you act on philosophies that matters- and here's an example of how Wright acts on his beliefs by preaching a dangerous message- one that even has deadly consequences. That's beyond defensible, IMO.

CStanley -- I said the statement is irresponsible and foolish, so we agree on that.

But in the scheme of the larger dialogue surrounding this subject, I think it's also safe to assume that the members of any Church that hear such a comment are perfectly capable of researching and dismissing it as baseless.

Not unlike our Catholic Church: When the priest preaches abstinence as the only acceptable choice for youth, we have a side discussion with our son, where we make it clear that, while we hope he'll be careful and wait, we know he's only human and accordingly needs to be damn sure to use a condom if his humanity gets the better of him.

If the end result of the priest's message and Wright's message is that some people are less careful about sex -- yes, that's terrible and destructive. But it's hardly a terribleness or destructiveness that's unique to Wright, or more damning of him or his congregant than it is of similarly irresponsible statements made by lily-White men and women of the cloth in lily-white congregations.

Regular TMV commenter Domajot is having trouble with the Disqus system again, so she emailed me the following thoughts, which I think are worthwhile, so I wanted to post them here on her behalf ...

Though I respect McCain, I could not vote for him due to several of his positions on major issues. For a number of reasons, I much prefer Obama to Clinton, However, the 'Hillary Watch' type of attitude displayed by many posts at TMV bothers me [to] no end.

She and those who support her are given no safe quarter, no benefit of the doubt, and no context whatsoever. By way of context, completely missing from the 'get Hillary' commentary, are the following factors:

1) The Clintons did not invent ugly politics, they are survivors of it. For comparison, reflect on what the Bush campaign did to McCain in 2000, even if you wish to disregard how the Clintons themselves were treated by Republicans during and after the Clinton presidency.

2) While it is true, that Hillary misrepresents and spins, the degree to which she does it looks different according to whom you compare her. Remember the sparring between McCain and Romney? They were tied neck-and-neck in the race for most misrepresentation and twisting of facts. An open minded observer of American politics ought to wonder where that would have gone, had they had more time at the center of attention as rivals for the nomination.
BTW, notice that Hillary always 'attacks' while Obama merely 'criticizes'. Interesting, that.

3) Although Obama appears to be trying to keep his head above the sludge, he is not pristine. He has also tried to pad his resume, as in horning in on credit for bipartisan legislation when his participation consisted mostly of showing up for the photo op. Sen. Specter commented on this pointedly, though without deep rancor. Yet no one sees this is a reflection on his character. Glad as I am of that, I would rather that kind of sensitivity were extended to other candidates instead of pounding away at only one, as if removing one person from the political arena could cure all the ills of American politics.

Uneven and unfair treatment of politicians is also part of what is wrong with politics

There are other factors I'm tempted to cite, but I want to avoid writing an epic here.

There is also a serious danger in creating a black and white scenario like this. Sooner or later attention will focus on the 'hero' half of this duality, and he will be revealed as a flesh and blood human being, with real flaws. The more unrealistically someone is built up, even if by only making him the not-Hillary, the bigger will be the disappointment when flaws, shortcomings and failures (all inevitable) emerge. We may be laying the groundwork for the downfall of the hero, whether that person is Obama or McCain.

I understand that each of us has a different yardstick by which we measure crimes and misdemeanors by others. I admit, for one, that I don't see the blue dress as being as deplorable as the Iraq mess.

Still, I propose that we would all be better off if we kept our outrages at political manipulations on a more even and dispassionate level.

I wanted to get this off my chest. You are the unlucky medium I chose for doing so.
That's the price you pay for being a nice guy.

First, I don't see equivalence between preaching abstinence and preaching that the government is involved in a conspiracy against blacks, and second, the link I provided shows there's far more evidence that the latter has caused ACTUAL damage rather than the presumed damage that many on the left feel has come of abstinence education.

Yes, people are perfectly capable of researching the information to find out that Wright is wrong- but apparently many African Americans have succumbed to belief in this particular conspiracy theory because their fears have been exploited. If you (and Obama, apparently) choose not to hold Wright responsible for that, then I just strongly disagree with you, that's all there is to it.

Of course McCain would make a defense of Obama re: Wright. For decades, the MSM and Democrats have raked GOP candidates for their getting endorsements from the religious right.

Invariably, the media found clips of pastors criticizing single mothers etc.

Now, however, because of Wright...McCain is the first GOP candidate in a generation whom the Democrats have to bite their tongues in connecting him with a pastor.

Wright is Manna from Heaven for the GOP. It is only surprising HRC waited so long (a mistake, I would argue...she needs to hammer Obama's White working class vote in Penn.).

As CStanley and WhoCares note, this video was approved and sold by the Church (i.e., they did not see it as unremarkable or unrepresentative). What other Wright videos are out there...in which Wright is perhaps not so polite and well-spoken?

And Pete, I wasn't claiming any sort of conspiracy over the TUCC website scrubbing. I'm just stating that when there are statements there of their core beliefs which would be surprising and objectionable to a lot of people, which are then removed during the time that this blows up into a political liability for Obama, it appears to be something other than a routine revamping of the site. That doesn't require a conspiracy, just someone at the church who wanted to help downplay the controversy.

CStanley -- Rev. Wright is responsible for what he says; I'm not absolving him, neither is Obama. I'm only claiming that his remarks on AIDS are comparably careless to other religious leaders' who preach messages that potentially mislead their congregations. And while I don't have time to do it now, I've read more than one source on the counterproductive nature of the abstinence only approach. I wouldn't expect Bush's CDC to issue reports critical of his policies, but I believe the WHO has done so. Maybe one of our other erstwhile readers has a source at the ready. Are the "abstinence" and "conspiracy" messages the same? No -- but the end result apparently is, namely, a portion of the listeners use those messages to dismiss smart and careful preventitive steps. And if that's the case, then under your framework, any public figure is guilty who has ever heard a religious "mentor" utter either careless statement and has failed to publicly and privately challenge that statement. Net: You're asking for perfection from Obama on a point that you don't demand perfection from others.

People join a church as a community. A religious leader has to kill someone or be a pedophile before the congregation demands a change. How many on the Right blamed Katrina on "queers", I don't see evangelicals flocking to the more "liberal" churches. While Wright has made some controversial statements, I don't think he's a Farhakahn(sp) or MalcolmX.

I hereby demand that Barack Obama denounce and reject all statements contrary to the political mainstream made by every single friend or family member he has ever had. Ever.

Then and only then will he prove to me that he is not too black, not a Muslim and not a closet member of the black panthers.

So the reverend said america's chickens came home to roost. First off, he was quoting someone else when he said it.

Second, that very fact has been known and accepted for years by anyone involved in foreign affairs. The CIA/State Dept term for it is "Blowback", and its nothing new. We taught the afghanis to fight, Osama was fighting with them. We backed Saddam in the 80's, we used radical muslims, central and south american rebels, anyone who was seen as an asset in forwarding the agenda of the day. So lets all quit acting like the idea of us having any connection to the overall situation today is a surprise to anyone. To think otherwise you'd are a naive fool or your head is so far in the sand you should just burn your voter registration card and shut up.

Third, that particular sermon was actually pretty good if you bother to listen to the entire thing. The overall message was about not getting caught up in a percieved struggle and losing our humanity. The part about soldiers eventually learning to enjoy killing babies was especially moving. I find that particularly applicable lately since we seem to have become totally desensitised to "collateral damage" as if we are not talking about civilians being blown to pieces.

"The part about soldiers eventually learning to enjoy killing babies was especially moving."

I don't remember that part Slamfu, and I trust you don't personally believe most soldiers ever "learn to enjoy" such an awful thing. The soldiers I know would disagree, and where they have been (even unintentionally) responsible for such "collateral damage," they are duly torn, sickened, and eternally guilt-ridden.

The inhumanity of war doesn't necessarily remove the humanity of the front-line participants.

Pete, the main point I'm making about rejecting your analogy is that there isn't the same fearmongering involved. To make the Catholic side of that equivalent, you'd have to have priests giving homilies where they tell young people in the congregation that the government is out to harm them, and sex education courses which teach about condom usage are part of a conspiracy toward that end. It's THAT part of the message that is so harmful, because when you see the staggering numbers of black Americans who believe the conspiracy about HIV, and then hear that there are well respected black preachers who are speading that, I don't think it's a stretch to think that it's the trust that those church members have in their pastors that leads them to believe this without evidence (the alternative would be that large numbers of black people in America really aren't very intelligent- and I definitely don't believe that- I just think their fears are being stoked, and that of course there are historical reasons for those fears to have justification.)

Furthermore, I have never, never heard a Catholic priest preach an 'abstinence only' sermon, and certainly never heard anything about it in a political context (ie, advising parishioners that we should reject sex education which includes info on prevention of STD's.) So even if you're point about actual harm from abstinence only sex ed courses is true, this isn't something that the Church is pushing in terms of how the secular education of our kids is handled. The Church just does what it should, by sticking to discussions about the moral and spiritual issues related to sexuality.

CStanley,

Points taken and maybe I'm assigning far too much of the conglomerated Religious Right to the Catholic Church. That's not fair. Regardless, on balance, the naivete of the conglomerated Religious Right regarding human sexuality is no less dangerous in my mind than the conspiracy theories of Wright because the end result is the same: some congregants are more careless about sexuality and suffer as a result. The congregants who don't fall for the dangers of either school of thought are likely the more educated and independent-minded, and I know plenty of people in that category (public figures and not) who turn the other way when their pastors spread mis-informed, falliable, and equally destructive lessons about sexuality. Perhaps they shouldn't, but they do -- and they are rarely if ever subjected to the type of dismissive scrutiny being applied to Obama.

Sorry that was a poor choice of words, but the fact that soldiers learn to do it at all was what I meant. To transfer their rage against the soldiers of the enemy to the unarmed and helpless. This happens a lot and especially with our current methods of precision bombing that nonetheless kill everyone in the vicinity, combined with the fact our enemies hide amongst the unarmed, have lead to lots of dead civilians for every insurgent killed. They do it too, and in far greater numbers, and the case is pretty solid that many of them do it with gusto believing they have every right to do so, and it is this I think the sermon was preaching against.

Our Charge
To identify and to address political justice and social justice issues which have particularly adverse effects on the lives and rights of persons of African descent in the United States and throughout the Diaspora. CIS has a political justice and a social justice committee which are committed to educating and empowering the individual and the community to improve our world by standing up to injustice.

Our Vision
Our vision is to build lives of all people in a multitude of social, political, and educational fulfilling settings. Church In Society (CIS) has Political and International Justice, and Social Justice committees that work on a variety of issues that affect Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora. Whether it is a march on City Hall protesting inadequate housing, conducting town hall meetings on Poverty and Welfare Reform, hosting forums for voters from the congregation and community, so they may ask questions to potential candidates' seeking political offices, CIS is committed to educating and empowering the community.

From another non black Christian church selected sorta at random from the internet:

Our Purpose

Heights Baptist Church exists to EXALT the Savior in worship, ENABLE believers in maturity, ministry, and missions, and EVANGELIZE non-believers to a personal relationship with Jesus.

I can understand why those who are farther left then their main stream counterparts are not offended by Barak Obama's church. Compare the two mission statements.

Whocares,

OK -- I compared the two. What's the problem? I think the statement from Barack Obama's church is a great, uplifting statement -- focused precisely on the type of social action Jesus talked about, in terms of caring for, standing up for the "least of these." In fact, the statement from Obama's church is more focused on the "least of these" (and hence more Christian?) than the "non black Christian church" statement you shared.

I don't mean to offend, but you are grabbing pieces of so-called "evidence" that do nothing to support your argument and everything to prove the point that Obama's church is on balance a great force for positive social change.

Pete, another point that occurred to me as I read your comment about how parishioners can respond to these things, is that part of my issue is that there's no evidence at all that Obama felt it necessary to do the things you suggest.

You say, for example, that if a priest talked about the absolute need to remain chaste rather than acknowledging that many people fall short of that, that you think a prudent, wise parent would continue that discussion after Mass and say, "look son, abstinence is ideal for a number of reasons but you're human and we want to make sure that if you do have sex, that it doesn't have deadly consequences."

OK, I'm cool with that. (It's a variation of how we discuss it with our kids.)

But Obama, to whatever degree he was aware of this part of Wright's teaching (I admit, we don't know if he was until now), didn't similarly see the harmful effect it could have if congregants were being swayed to believe the conspiracy theory (because of their trust in Rev. Wright?) Again, I realize in this specific case, I have no idea of how often Wright said these things- though I tend to believe it wasn't too infrequent, because of the way the congregation reacted to his statements as though this was a point that was already established and agreed upon.)

Do you get my point?

Obama's church is a great force for positive social change?

Thanks Pete but Barak Obama's church does not offend me. Your defense of his church does offend me.

What offends me is the above statement.

The religious right....er "The American Taliban" is evil. They wanted to implement social change.

The religious left....er "TUCC" is good. They want to implement social change.

The true message? Hypocrisy knows no bounds.