redblueamerica.com

Picking up where I left off here, there are still several interesting aspects about Obama's Wright is Wrong press conference this week that are worth unpacking. A reporter helpfully picked up on Obama's theme, asking how this might be yet another "distraction" for his messianic campaign. Obama responds:

OBAMA: Well, I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that ... I don’t think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don’t think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign and what we’re trying to do for the American people and with the American people.

So, Wright's racist and anti-American rants — which he never heard before "in context" — are an offense against (in order) Obama, Obama's campaign, and then the American people. Quite the narccisist, that Obama. Frankly, dude, the American people could care less about how little concern Wright has for your feelings and campaign. Really. If Wright bellowed "God Damn Obama" from the pulpit, sure. But he damned America, not you.

Obama was then asked about Trinity United Church of Christ, its new pastor, Otis Moss III, and the candidate's attendance in the past and future.

OBAMA: ... When I go to church, it’s not for spectacle. It’s to pray and to find a stronger sense of faith. It’s not to posture politically. It’s not to hear things that violate my core beliefs. And I certainly don’t want to provide a distraction for those who are worshiping at Trinity.

So as of this point, I am a member of Trinity. I haven’t had a discussion with Reverend Moss about it, so I can’t tell you how he’s reacting and how he’s responding.

If Obama's core beliefs do not match the preachings of Wright, he must not have gone to church very often if he wanted to avoid spectacle. The only other logical explanations are that (1) Obama's core beliefs are in line with Wright's poisonous Black Liberation Theology and he's fibbing, or (2) he continued to go to that church for purely political purposes; to maintain the political connections that launched his campaign. Considering Obama's long and intimate relationship with Wright, I'd lean toward the former.

As for Rev. Moss, his Easter Sunday sermon after the pastor disaster erupted in March was a passionate defense of Wright as the victim of a "lynching." And it is extremely unlikely that Wright would pass off the ministry he has built over the last 30-plus years to a man who would stray from his core Black Liberation Theology message. Oh, and about that, Obama claims complete ignorance.

OBAMA: Well, first of all, in terms of liberation theology, I am not a theologian. So I think to some theologians there might be some well worked out theory of what constitutes liberation theology versus non-liberation theology.

You don't have to be a theologian to understand — in at least a basic sense — the driving theology of your church. Most Catholics, like me, don't know all the theology of the faith frontwards and backwards. But we understand the underpinnings, which we embrace by going to Mass. And the more you go to Mass, or talk to the priests, the more you learn.

Obama's response here is similar to the way Wright himself dodges. When he's asked to explain Black Liberation Theology or how the government invented AIDS to kill black folks, Wright attacks the questioner of being unworthy to even ask the question unless he's read the list of books on the subject Wright will spout at the moment.

Obama also maintains that what Wright said at the National Press Club "yesterday" — a construction that conveniently excludes Wright's anit-American tirades from the pulpit, not to mention his racialist education theories at the NAACP dinner in Detroit — "directly contradicts everything that I’ve done during my life."

OBAMA: ... It contradicts how I was raised and the setting in which I was raised. It contradicts my decisions to pursue a career of public service. It contradicts the issues that I’ve worked on politically. It contradicts what I’ve said in my books. It contradicts what I said in my convention speech in 2004. It contradicts my announcement. It contradicts everything that I’ve been saying on this campaign trail.

Sure, I'll buy most of that. Obama's rhetoric doesn't match Wright's vitriol. But that's exactly why this is such an important issue to explore. What a politician says on the stump and what one believes isn't always in concert. And, besides, some passages in Obama's books are not that far off what Wright said.

So where does that leave us? Obama has admitted that discussing Wright is a legitimate political issue. And since we know so little about him, it's important that we think about it, and talk about it.