As you all will know by now, Barack Obama has distanced himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright by, basically, saying that he deplores ‘certain statements,’ that he disagrees with them and that he never heard him say stuff like that in the Church himself. That last part is, quite simply nonsense. It’s impossible for him not to have known who Wright was and what he believed, simply because Wright constantly mixes religion and politics / social affairs.

But not only that, Rich Lowry quotes Barack Obama himself, admitting that he heard Wright talk about some of the issues which now made Wright a social outcast. And not only that, Obama was so greatly influenced by this particular sermon, that he decided to name his book after it.

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

O, and the Corner also deals with the “crazy uncle” argument (which is really bad):

But the key to the crazy uncle scenario is that you have no choice but to put up with him—he’s your uncle, so he has to be at family gatherings and you do too. None of us chooses our family, and the unchosen family sometimes comes with unavoidable attachments we would never willingly choose, but must abide. Even if the uncle is your uncle by marriage, you didn’t choose him. That is decidedly not the case with one’s pastor—particularly in a church Obama didn’t grow up in from childhood, and a church so thoroughly defined by the personality and appeal of a particular pastor. He chose it willingly, and he has remained a member willingly. In discussing his decision to join Wright’s church in The Audacity of Hope, Obama himself says “It came about as a choice and not an epiphany.” (p. 208) It seems from that book, in fact, that Wright was much more than just a pastor at the nearest church to his house; he was the man who brought Obama to accept the faith and be baptized. He didn’t just baptize Obama’s kinds, but Obama himself. Hardly a crazy uncle.

It’s very simple: Obama accepted this radical talk, and was greatly influenced by Wright, at least spiritually. However, considering the fact that Wright mixes religion with politics, it seems impossible to me that Obama didn’t sympathize at least somewhat with Wright’s extreme views or, and this is equally important, wasn’t disgusted enough by it to walk away.

O, and then there’s also this:

In Monday’s interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.

“When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.” Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan’s views or Qaddafi’s.

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.”

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD comments:

Ben Smith absurdly likens the comments and stepping down by Geraldine Ferraro, while being clumsily blunt, with those of the disgustingly anti-American and racist rantings, and dismissal, of Jeremiah Wright.

I just can’t imagine the worldview that looks toward a person like Wright as someone that I’d attend Church to listen too, someone that I’d choose to get married by, someone I’d watch baptize my two children. I realize these are selective comments in the video, but come on, we all know that there’s a lot more.

Shay at Booker Rising:

If you’ve been going to a pastor’s church for 20 years and he married you and baptized your children, you agree with most of what that pastor says. Rev. Wright was clearly also not being mindful that his congregant is running for president. Sure, America has done some jacked up stuff. What country has not? However, despite his anti-Americanism, Rev. Wright ironically is aware that there is no country that provides more opportunity and freedom for black folks than America. I’ve been to Trinity United Church of Christ a couple of times. I’m not even Christian, and was not as conservative as I now am when I attended with my friend. Even then, I found the church promoted a political agenda - it is definitely a Pan-Africanist church, which in itself is good although that church promotes a socialist version of Pan-Africanism that I don’t support - to the exclusion of a spiritual one rooted in biblical teachings. Or as one of my uncles says, Trinity United Church of Christ is an Afrocentric and not a Christocentric (or even an Afrocentric-Christocentric) church. That fact will not help countering the claim that Sen. Obama is “an undercover Muslim” bent on destroying America from within by joining with anti-American forces. The rhetoric from folks close to Sen. Obama (his pastor, his wife) is not matching the one-America rhetoric that he is putting out there, and opponents will exploit that fact. When even my Grandma, a moderate Florida Democrat backing Sen. Obama’s campaign who is in Chicago right now, is crying foul about Rev. Wright’s comments, arguing that he is not Christocentric, and that Sen. Obama should leave his church then I know something is up.

Also read this post. It’s a must read at JustOneMinute.