I sometimes wonder what rabbit hole I've fallen down around here sometimes...

I agree, I have a really hard time seeing how this speech is divisive as some have tried to say. I think that this was a truly honest discussion of race. I thought it was very well handled.

Let's not mince words.

Obama now admits he heard his pastor use divisive language, stuff that made him cringe, stuff that he totally disavowed in this campaign, and yet he:

allowed this man to marry him, baptize his children, titled his two books after him, contributed money to his church, appointed him to his presidential spiritual advising committee, etc...

Yes Barack, you don't get to choose your grandmother. And we all heard members of our family say things that are mean, even racist.

But we get to CHOOSE our pastor. And who you choose to associate with, for over 20 years, demonstrates what supreme LACK OF JUDGMENT you have.

This speech has become a Rorschach test for the MyDD community (as well as a reading comprehension test).  It reveals a great deal about the writers' psychologies.

for reminding me why I still manage to wade through the bile and piss that passes for content on this site.

Not because i'm an Obama supporter, but because you give clear and well reasoned analysis, not out of context attack dog hit pieces.

The speech was really quite something.  I get why there's real resistance to it.  What he did was incredibly honest and open and to anti-Obama partisans, it's got to have hit hard.

Good speech, but I don't think it changed people's views on Wright or their new found fears about Obama.

I think this speech was aimed at keeping AA's with him and an attempt at bringing middle america white voters back to him.  I think he succeeded at keeping AA's with him, he will keep his diehard Obama fans with him but I don't see this changing the majority of white's views that Wright is racist and Obama is of the same cloth.  To do that he needed to completely distance himself from Wright and he didn't do that.

It is up to the MSM to deal with it now.  They will decide if Obama is done or not.

staaart.... yourrr.... pre-fabricated stock comments!

3...
2...
1...

"OBAMA IS FINISHED. DONE!"
"TWENTY YEARS TOO LATE."
"YOU LET THIS MAN OFFICIATE AT YOUR WEDDING AND BAPTIZE YOUR CHILDREN?"

----

I just hope a couple people take the time to read the speech. Whether you support Obama or not, it truly is honest, intelligent, and thought-provoking.

Some might, and unfortunately do still use race in a divisive manner. This is a reality we cannot ignore.

Yes, I agree. Barack Obama is one of them. He has used it to deeply divide the Democratic base. First he smeared Edwards as a racist, then he smeared Bill and Hillary as racists.

The hypocrisy of this man is astonishing.

Had he given this admittedly terrific speech at the beginning of his campaign, he would have been at the top of my list for Democratic candidates.

Too little, too late.

i win.

I didn't see his Ferraro comment as Jerome did, either. Obama was talking about people's reactions to Wright, and strongly implying that those who believe that Ferraro harbors "some deep seated racial bias" are WRONG.

Keeping hope alive I see.

I thought it was a good speech too.  However, he has tripped himself up with too many inconsistencies IMO and this will cause him a lot of problems if he gets to the GE.  .  

You obviously did not watch the speech.  Obama took no shots at anyone.

This may be the most honest political speech I've ever heard.  I expected him to denounce Wright, and talk about the need for unity.  I didn't expect the level of detail, the extremely personal nature, and the honesty about America's racial challenges and what it will take to meet them.  This was absolutely outstanding.

The desire to win an election has stripped Hillary's supporters of all sense of judgement.

OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING

it was a great speech.

As I pointed out in the other thread - Jerome read what he wanted to read.... and his fanbois happily jumped on board.

How anyone can see his creative snipping as anything other than CLEARLY trying to wring a different meaning than intended is beyond me.

This isn't a soundbite speech - not today.   It's a sweeping address that doesn't claim to play damage control, or put 'an issue' or a 'controversy' to rest.

For better or worse, Barack Obama - his campaign and his supporters - have cast their lot with the theory that Obama is more than just another President, just another candidate.  That's not to say he's a messiah or Jesus -- it's to say that every so often, America finds itself with an extraordinary leader.   Once you start down that path, you need to deliver.

That's what Obama has continued to do here.  This is a carbon copy "I reject and denounce" mea culpa -- it couldn't and shouldn't be.   It's exactly what he set it out to be... a larger discussion of the underlying issues around the last few weeks of this campaign - and the undercurrent that's really been a trickle since 2007.

BTW... It's worth reading the entire section that Jerome hackishly snipped apart for his own purposes.  Read it all - and tell me you don't see the section differently than Jerome's original hackish portrayal.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.  On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.  
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.  For some, nagging questions remain.  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.  

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial.  They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.  Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough.  Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask?  Why not join another church?  And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man.  The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.  He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.  Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.  Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity.  Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.  Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor.  They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.  The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.  As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.  He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.  Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.  He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.  I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me.  And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable.  I can assure you it is not.  I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.  We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

Shame on Jerome.

That was cut, excerpt, and skew worthy of Rush Limbaugh.

Obama did not distance himself from his radical kook spiritual adviser. He praised him.

He is divisive and full of crap.

Unity my ass.

Get real.

Please explain how the Ferraro reference "took a shot" at her.  You have completely ignored the text and are seeing only what you want to see.  Which, I suppose, is not surprising.

Gtreat speach - this is the litmus test for people who want change for the better or who want to go back to business as usual.

very emotional, honest and deeply thought through.

A politician with depth. What a novelty