Chicago Daily Observer

Big Media want the presidential campaign to focus on “the issues” by which they mean the mesh of confusing statistics on the economy, tax cuts, energy and health care by which Obama…twisting and turning…endeavors to make himself invisible to hair-splitting evaluation. On the economy he is a master at changing direction to obfuscate the fact that he is a redistributionist. On foreign policy he is a veritable chameleon hiding the fact that in debate with Hillary Clinton he advocated negotiation with Iran with no preconditions. On energy he tongues-in-cheek a mention of drilling and says as an aside “yes, nuclear” but is the same-old, same-old. In issue debates, frankly, the truth isn’t in him. As he never has recognized absolutes of any kind, he is at a distinct advantage. He is a giant squid, inking the water with deception and the establishment media cheer him on-warning McCain that the worst ... Read More...

What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.

In fact, of course, Mr. Obama took his oath on the Bible, not — as the rumors have it — on the Koran. He is far more active in church than John McCain is.

Two percent. That’s the percent of voters outside the “Motor City” that have a favorable impression of embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. You don’t have to be a pollster to understand how strongly disliked Kilpatrick is throughout Michigan.

Sit in any restaurant or bar, and all you hear is people talking about Kilpatrick’s troubles. Indicted in March on eight felony counts for committing perjury during a whistleblower trial that eventually cost the city about $9 million, the Mayor spent one night in jail on August 7th for violating his bond and then was arraigned the next day for a new crime. In the latest charges, Kilpatrick is accused of assaulting two sheriff’s deputies as they were trying to serve one of his close friends with a subpoena.

And, what does this have to do with Barack Obama? Although Kilpatrick has distanced himself from Obama and Obama has distanced himself from ... Read More...

Tucked into the NY Times Magazine was this explosive profile of DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s left-hand—his chief of staff and CEO of the Dem convention, Leah Daughtry.

Appointed a year ago spring, right about when Barack Obama shunted the Rev. Jeremiah Wright off the stage for his Springfield campaign kickoff, Daughtry is a ticking time bomb. For she’s a Rev. in her spare time, and she espouses the same black liberation theology Obama finally repudiated a few months ago. Daniel Bergner, NY Times, “Can Leah Daughtry bring faith to the party?” A few excerpts, starting with her father’s ministry:

About 600 of Chicago’s top African-American lawyers and judges gave standing ovations Thursday to two preachers who’ve been vilified in recent months for their sermons that went nationwide on the Web.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Rev. Michael Pfleger became headaches for Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign when their controversial comments became fodder for conservative talk-show hosts.

Since both John McCain and Barack Obama purport to be persons of faith and prayer, I have devised a little prayer for both of them. It goes:

“Lord, save me from my friends—I can cope perfectly well with my enemies.”

Oddly enough, some of the friends plaguing or having plagued both candidates are themselves persons of faith and prayer.

We need no further reminders, do we, of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recently Father Michael Pfleger and the varying degrees of damage they have inflicted on Obama?

“Poof!” declares Obama, quite wisely, “they are no longer my friends.”

Then there are the Reverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Until very recently they were McCain’s newest best friends of convenience, vigorously courted to calm the qualms of the fundamentalist evangelical constituency so necessary to Republican victory. Trouble is, their historic histrionics seriously offended other necessary constituencies.

“Poof,” declares McCain, quite wisely, ... Read More...

At long last, Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama has resigned his
membership in the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ. It only
took him two decades to renounce his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright, despite Obama’s previous insistence that he could no more disown Wright
than his own grandmother. What a difference a few weeks can make! Time will tell
if this desperate move occurred too late to be of any real value to his
staggering candidacy.

Of course, there are cynical observers who will insist that Obama acted out
of pure political expediency rather than as the result of a genuine crisis of
conscience. The inflammatory racial rhetoric issuing from the pulpit of the
Trinity United Church of Christ seemed better suited to a beer hall meeting
than ... Read More...

Across America seven days a week, parents drop their kids at day care centers, which are supported by funding from the federal government.

But what makes one facility noteworthy in inner city Chicago is that it’s run by Trinity United Church of Christ. It’s the same church whose former head pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, drew widespread scrutiny after he cursed the U.S. government for its treatment of African-Americans.

FOX News has learned that over the last 15 years, Trinity has received at least $15 million in grants from the federal government — in other words, taxpayer money.

Barack Obama’s pastor buddies don’t frighten me as much as his church-going brethren.

You have to expect that the bizarre likes of Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright would ooze to the surface in any number of organizations or institutions—right or left, Republican or Democratic. But the multitude gathered in what is supposed to be a temple of God, cheering on the racist slobbering of the two “reverends’” is scary.

Cheering is too mild a word. Look at the video of Pfleger’s rant against Hilary Clinton; notice the guys in the background. They’re on their feet, clapping, laughing and cheering. One is nearly doubled over in laughter. Broader shots of the crowds show that while some people are sitting quietly—in disapproval, I hope—there also was widespread affirmation of both Pfleger’s and Wright’s “sermons.”

They were eating it up.

God damn America. White people think they’re entitled to everything. They won’t tolerate ... Read More...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Rev. Michael Pfleger’s remarks at Sen. Barack Obama’s church that led the Catholic priest to apologize and the Democratic hopeful to renounce them:

“Most commentators are already focusing on the inappropriateness of the race-baiting comments by Father Pfleger. More serious is the venue in which he delivered his diatribe and his long-standing ties to Sen. Obama.

“Father Pfleger’s tirade would be inexcusable anywhere, but it is even more offensive when it happens in a church. It does not matter that it was not his own, nor does it matter that it happened in a church that has a record of allowing demagogues to exploit it. When churches become forums for political rallies, both religion and the First Amendment are corrupted.

“Obama and Pfleger are no strangers. Indeed, when Obama was in the state senate in Illinois, he conveniently arranged for Father Pfleger’s St. ... Read More...

7. Racial generalizations of any type in connection with the candidacy of Barack Obama are out of order. Barack Obama is free to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white person” and to lump the middle-class voters of Pennsylvania together as nativists, racists, and superstitious in their reliance on religion and guns. Only endemic white racism — never anger over Obama’s overt racialist stereotyping of the white middle class and his Reverend’s slurs — can explain that group’s rejection of him at the primary polls.

8. Substantial campaign contributions and the money nexus in politics are pernicious, proof of the “old politics” with a long history of distorting campaigns. The record fund-raising and enormous war-chest of Barack Obama are instead proof of a healthy American democracy and preclude any need for public campaign financing.

Occasionally, Maya Brachear actually writes about religion as the Chicago Tribune’s Religion Reporter. Many of her columns are tolerable enough as sort of statistical analysis and trendwatch for a secular newspaper.

However, in her blog post yesterday she veered into journalistic trick/rant more suited to her rival at the Sun-Times than someone who observes and analyzes religion, rather than practicing partisan politics. Maya tells us (accurately):

Then Brachear questions:

On May 13, John McCain supporter John Haggee issued an apology to the Catholic League for controversial anti-Catholic comments he’s made in the past. “Catholic League President William Donoghue [sic] accepted the apology,” noted Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear in the midst of his 8-paragraph story published the following day.

Shear closed by noting that ”[n]ot all Catholics were mollified” by Hagee’s letter of apology, citing “Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.” Shear failed to label Kelley nor the Alliance as liberal, although a visit to their Web site makes it pretty clear their political agenda skews in favor of liberal Democratic social welfare initiatives.

But more telling is this: Kelley used to work for the DNC during the Kerry campaign as Director of Religious Outreach. Catholic or no, it’s not all that surprising that the former liberal Democratic Party staffer would refuse ... Read More...

Jeremiah Wright is still a stone around Barack Obama’s neck and his supporters want to lay the same weight on John McCain by using Rev. John Hagee, televangelist and pastor of a Texas mega church who endorsed McCain at McCain’s request.

Jeremiah Wright has made it impossible to pretend that he was quoted out of context so Obama’s supporters have given the candidate a pass and taken to attacking those who told you the truth about Wright in the first place.

I hear the same thing from some callers and e-mailers to my show on WLS in Chicago, hometown to Wright and Obama. Rich and the callers are wrong in their belief that the ... Read More...

Senator Obama’s speech does share one quality with Cooper Union, Gettysburg, the FDR Inaugural, Henry V at Agincourt, Socrates’ Apology, etc.: It’s history. He said, apropos the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that “I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” But last week Obama did disown him. So, great-speech-wise, it’s a bit like Churchill promising to fight them on the beaches and never surrender, and then surrendering a month and a half later, and on a beach he decided not to fight on.

Bill Moyers lead off his self titled Journal last night on PBS with a lecture on his conversation with Rev. Wright last week. Moyers, ever the partisan scold, failed to see how anyone could question his judgment in giving a platform to Rev. Wright to do some damage control to his (and by proxy Sen. Obama’s) image. As is clear, Moyers failed last week, coming across like an infomercial rather than a reporter, and Rev. Wright only succeeded in appearing more radical, and more asleep through the last 20 years than his forgetful flock in the pews must have been.

Moyers solidified his position as the leader of the soft-spoken partisan hacks with this solemn attack on a broad swath of the population:

“Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got ... Read More...

When it comes to politics in Chicago, Rev. Jeremiah A.Wright Jr. is a big fish in his small pond.

His parishioners at Trinity Church of Christ obviously revere him, and with their support he’s built a large and thriving South Side church whose 8,000 or so members include several influential black leaders—including, as we all know now, Sen. Barack Obama.

The very traits that have apparently thrown so many white people into a tizzy are what make Wright so popular with his flock.

They love his passion, his worldview, his sense of humor and his powerful and passionate delivery. They get a kick out of the ways in which he uses his mastery of the Bible, music and history to devastate his targets with zingers, wise cracks and mimicry. They embrace his liberation theology and they think he’s absolutely right when he says that America is hypocritical in its foreign ... Read More...

Northwestern withdrew an offer to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for an honorary degree this year, Al Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said Wednesday night.

At a Dallas church on Sunday, Wright, the former minister of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said NU planned on presenting him with a doctorate in sacred theology. After controversial clips of Wright’s sermons were widely disseminated, NU withdrew the offer, according to an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“The president of the university called and told me he was withdrawing the degree because I was not patriotic,” Wright told the congregation of Friendship-West Baptist Church, the article said.

“Why does Reverend Wright matter so much to you,” asks the caller to my WLS talk show. He thinks we in the media need to get over it.

Obama has thrown Jeremiah Wright off the Obama Bus and is now hoping that white people will get over it and black people will forgive him.

I find it amazing and frustrating that when I attacked Rev. Wright’s maligning of America I was called a racist, but when Barack Obama used some of the same language I had used he is compared on the Huffington Post to Jackie Robinson, an exceptional man standing tall against the hard wind of racism.

But this is not an issue of race. It is not an issue of partisan politics. It is not an issue of casual association – minster to congregant – or one of taking the Reverend out of context. Obama tried to ... Read More...

The list of Afrocentric “educators” whom Reverend Jeremiah Wright has invoked in his media escapades since this Sunday is a disturbing reminder that academia’s follies can enter the public world in harmful ways. Now the pressing question is whether they have entered presidential candidate Barack Obama’s worldview as well.

Some in Wright’s crew of charlatans have already had their moments in the spotlight; others are less well known. They form part of the tragic academic project of justifying self-defeating underclass behavior as “authentically black.”

When Barack Obama made his Philadelphia speech which many heralded, I was a dissenter because I saw the impossibility of his being able to mediate between the ranting racist raves of Jeremiah Wright and reason. Impossibly, Obama decided to do just that. He announced that he could no more repudiate Wright that he could the black community. That nonsense became a total disaster. For one thing, Obama was implying that the black community was joined at the hip with this demagogue!

I said that the prudent thing for Obama to have done is to blame himself for not becoming aware of Wright’s intransigent racism earlier but now that he has become aware, he was severing connection with Wright and the congregation. That is unconventional politics but for Obama it would have been the only prudent course to follow. He would not lose many votes doing this and the statement would ... Read More...

After 20 years of Sen. Obama being a parishoner, receiving baptism, marriage, and the baptism of his children from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Obama is reacting to Rev. Wright’s views expressed over the last week:

CNN Obama ‘outraged’ by Wright’s remarks

LA Times Barack Obama cuts bait with Jeremiah Wright

ABC News Obama Condemns Wright’s Defense

Washington Times Obama on “appalling” Wright: “I mean it”

Bloomberg Obama Calls Wright’s `Ridiculous’ Statements Offensive, Wrong

New York Times Op-Ed Columnist The Pastor Casts a Shadow

Fox News Obama: I Am ‘Outraged’ and ‘Angered’ By Wright’s Comments

Our Chicago Daily Observer editorial board wonders what else might take 20 years to get such a reaction from the Senator. Perhaps after another 20 years, Sen. Obama might note that the public schools in his neighborhood are terrible, the ... Read More...

For 53 years the Detroit Branch NAACP has sponsored one of the nation’s signature events. Thanks to hundreds of volunteers, dedicated staff and many business, corporate, community, faith-
based and labor organizations we can record a history of success in what has become the nation’s largest sit down dinner. This year shall be no different.

It is therefore our unique pleasure to announce that the speaker for the 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner will be the Honorable Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, pastor emeritus of the Trinity United
Church of Christ, Chicago, Illinois. Reverend Wright has challenged the nation, challenged our comfort zone and stimulated nation-wide discussion on the issues of how we must move forward together as both a nation and a people. We look forward to his participation here in the city of Detroit.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, I was 19 years old and fancifully considered myself to be far to the left of him. Notwithstanding that, he felt to me like one of my moral elders and tutors (as he still does). When I was first asked to sign a petition to make his birthday a national holiday, on a Manhattan side street in 1970, I was 21 and signed with pride. When, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan finally signed also, authorizing the bill for the King holiday, I was humbled to think of how far along I was in my 30s and how comparatively little I had to show for it. And last weekend, reading a beautiful reminiscence by King biographer Taylor Branch, I was arrested by the realization that King has now been dead for ... Read More...

Get this – before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Martin Luther King was a happy guy who had love in his heart for white America. After those civil rights watermark events, Dr. King became an angry Jeremiah – prophet from the Old Testament for the hyper-sensitive. Martin Luther King became an angry prophet:

“Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America’s ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King’s skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split—or white America’s ignorance ... Read More...

When Chicagoans who know Sen. Obama read the columns about him turned out by the national punditocracy, we tend to gasp and shake our heads in bemusement. He has become an ink blot for sick minds, very clever sick minds. Call up realclearpolitics.com and see what I mean. My favorite recent outbursts of hate come from Thomas Sowell, an African-American conservative economist, and from Naomi Schaefer Riley, the “assistant taste editor” of the Wall Street Journal (which title may be an oxymoron). Both write about Obama’s connection with the Trinity United Church of Christ.

One of the pillars of Obama’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is “economic parity.” On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with “America’s economic mal-distribution.” Among all of controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language “economic parity” and references to “mal-distribution” is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim ... Read More...

Sam Zell really has an object lesson for his next talk to the journalists that he employs at Tribune Company meetings around the country.
While the Sun Times New Group stands at a husky offering of under $.99 per share, The Chicago Tribune seems help bent on following it’s pulpy sibling down into the root cellar:

What brought STNG ot this lowly state? ... Read More...

I’d like to be able to feel Andrew Greeley’s pain, but he hurts in so many places, I wouldn’t know where to start.

It’s a darn shame Obama had to “defend his outspoken pastor,” says G. in his Sun-Times column. I would have said he had to defend himself for picking the guy, and not in a month of Sundays at Trinity UCC on 95th St. or in any other church would I let him off the hook with “outspoken.”

“There is no evidence at all that the senator identifies with his clergyman, and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” Other than he picked him as a veritable soul mate and guide and stayed with him 20 years.

By spending most of his adult life on the South Side of Chicago, and launching his careers as activist and politician there, Barack Obama has benefited from an unusual political and social base that is perhaps hard for the rest of the country to fully understand or relate to.

The area is both patchwork and blend of hardscrabble inner-city Black neighborhoods, well-to-do enclaves of the city’s Black elite, and the racially-mixed Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood with its strong Jewish presence where Obama and his family make their home. (The Obamas much-discussed house and lot are just across the street from my synagogue.) But it is much less a cauldron of conflict than an exceptional place of political cooperation where certain pacts and understandings were reached long ago that make for bedfellows that might seem strange to other parts of the country or the East Coast commentariat.

Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he had publicly and repeatedly cited as his mentor and had named as a campaign advisor? Whom he chose to perform his wedding and baptize his two daughters?

Because, until then, we were in the midst of Phase I—preventative medicine—of the media’s version of campaign health care for the Senator’s Presidential bid. Call it the Plan to Protect Obama (PPO).

In giving out up and down arrows for the week, Newsweek has proven itself once again to be suffering from an acute case of Obamamania.

Sean Hannity along with Rush receive a down arrow for using “race-baiting to score ratings. Now that’s hating America.” I would assume that’s for them playing Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speeches. Now, of course, Newsweek doesn’t quote any race-baiting comments but just trust them on this one.

And then somehow after suffering one of the most impressive political implosions in recent memory Barack Obama merits only a sideways arrow with this message: “Will the greatest speech in recent history get him sidelined as a “black candidate”?

I’m sorry? The greatest speech in recent history? How recent? Like in the past week? I think Newsweek may have a Obamamania problem. Someone call for help.

Want to know how hateful and destructive the Trinity United Church of Christ has been under Reverend Jeremiah “God damn America” Wright? So much so that over the last two decades it’s received millions of dollars in grants from both Democratic and Republican administrations at the federal, state, and city levels. Most of the money has gone to provide community child care, HIV and AIDS programs, food services, and Head Start. Here’s a sampling from the city of Chicago (which includes federal and state grants the city administers):

Barack Obama is a politician: Schooled, Glib, Impressive, and all too Human. His remarks about his white Grandmother being a ‘typical white person’ generally would be considered a safe slide to the base; but, this being a Presidential Campaign, Obama was tagged out.

Reaction to the document of his lecture on Race in America is being generally greeted with high praise. I thought it was thin beer – a political dodge to avoid speaking to his years of friendship and discipleship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright a Black Liberation preacher whose theology is a tangle of Marxism and Gospel.

Instead of explaining the appeal of Black Liberation theology to his heart, Obama lectured America with a moral equivalence dualism: Wright harbors hate; so does Obama’s white Grandmother. That works with radical lawyers making lawsuits for criminals against police and plays very well in the press: Mr. ‘A’ murdered seven people, by ... Read More...

As a Chicago organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I was standing in a sweaty but ebullient crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial that torrid August day when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his epic “I Have a Dream” speech.

I was in front of my TV set nearly 45 years later, on a comfortable couch, teacup in hand, watching Barack Obama deliver what is certain to be viewed as the most important single statement on race in America since King. That statement was profound, confronting racism at many levels and explaining anger, frustration and hostility on both sides of the sadly remaining color divide. Not even King took that on.

Yes, it was a political speech, but unlike any heard in my lifetime, including John F. Kennedy’s asking us to ask what we can do for our country. The only speeches that came ... Read More...

In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama’s “momentous” speech on race settled on merely “explaining” so-called racial differences between blacks and whites—and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the “black experience,” Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain’t what it used to be in America.

What better sign do we have that Obama Central is running scared in the wake of Rev. Jeremiah’s sermons than this plaintive plea by Sun-Times columnist and O. enthusiast Mary Mitchell:

But frankly, critics and those who are supporting a candidate other than Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination have gotten all of the mileage they can out of this debate. [No.]

As he sat down to write the lead “Tribune” editorial on Obama’s Philadelphia speech, Cringeley…who is there because he is not too liberal, not too conservative, not too moderate, not too pro-business, not too anti-free market…looked at the clock on the wall for some long seconds, calculated his deadline and started to ruminate.

He thought:

Let’s see. God the biggest thing I have to watch out for is that this paper not be considered racist. That’s first and foremost. So suppose I start out with the thought that Obama is undeniably the most talented man of his generation. No, can’t say that. Can’t use “man.” The most talented black man. No, AWFUL! That would make people think that there are separate classifications for talented blacks and others. No, let’s say “the most talented public official of his generation.” Is that right? No, that’s larding it on a bit too ... Read More...

Count me among those who wondered if the grandmother who worried about black men she passed on the street were still living. Answer: yes.

Here’s John Fund:

Mr. Obama’s campaign has made clear that his 84-year old grandmother, who has asked to be left alone, should be considered off-limits to political reporters. But yesterday, it was Mr. Obama who didn’t leave her alone when he used her for one of the central themes of his speech.

O. said he can’t disown Rev. Wright, who spoke from a pulpit to a crowded church that sold CD’s with his sermons recorded, any more than his grandmother, who raised him and along the way made “stereotypical” remarks in private that made him “cringe.”

Don’t they teach logic at Harvard? Or gratitude in church? Did Wright make him cringe?

Obama, Durkin said, waited until the past week to remove Wright from the campaign’s African American Leadership Council even though the campaign admits it knew months ago that Wright’s rhetoric could be a problem.

Further, Durkin said, Obama’s speech did not fully address the nature or scope of Wright’s remarks.

“Some people say these remarks were taken out of context, but I don’t know what other explanation you can offer. How you can say that what he said is not what he meant?” Durkin said. “He talks about the U.S. government injecting the AIDS virus into black Americans as a form of genocide. He’s suggests that somehow 9/11 was something America brought on itself.”

Obama’s long-standing and ongoing association with Wright, Durkin said, speaks to issues of judgment, which, he said, Obama has placed at the heart of his own campaign when applied to such issues as the Iraq ... Read More...

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday designed to douse the flames caused by his on-again, off-again disinheritance of and then endorsement of, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was pretty—but sorry, no cigar.

Moreover it is a case history of a political disaster. Obama was never stronger when he ran…as he did initially…as a man of mixed color untouched by the old racial bromides that pock-marked our society for fifty years. He was of a new generation. Not only is he lighter in complexion than the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, he is much younger, more free-flowing, less taken with himself with wit (something the senior Jackson at least never evidenced). Juggling the hand-mike before a rapt audience, Barack Obama looks like the new generation, unencumbered with the old hand-me-down racial stereotypes.

Then along comes the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Laden with the old rhetoric he is a recycled Minister Louis Farrakhan. ... Read More...

Blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

So thundered Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a video that was offered for sale by Trinity United Church of Christ about the government’s treatment of black Americans:

“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing `God Bless America’ No,no,no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!”

In addition to cursing America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after September 11, 2001 that the U. S. had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than ... Read More...

The plot thickens in the matter of Oprah Winfrey’s belonging to or attending Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th St. in Chicago, as mentioned in various places, including in a Chi Trib piece in January 2007:

it is amusing to take a snapshot of how all these people came up and what was happening in the legendary year 1969. Hillary Clinton was graduating from Wellesley or her way to Yale Law School; Gloria Steinem, after graduating from Smith and publishing a book, was the lioness of the women’s movement; Geraldine Ferraro had interrupted her law career to raise children (there may have been some actual suffering in that; she went on to found the – irony alert – Special Victims Unit); Reverend Jeremiah Wright was getting his master’s degree. Barack Obama was an eight-year old stepson of an oil company executive in Indonesia. He would go on to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard.

John McCain was being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.

On March 12…five days ago which is like a century in politics…I wrote that the Chicago area media have been going soft on things to criticize in the liberal Democratic party while continually harping on how loony Jim Oberweis is—and I cited as evidence of such overlook the twin