There is a saying in the black community that blacks cannot improve as a people because like crabs in a barrel whenever one tries to climb out of the barrel the other ones will pull him back down. The reaction of some of the so-called black leaders to the success of Senator Barack Obama seems to bear out this analogy. It seems like the closer he gets to making history the more the "haters" try to sabotage him. The sad part about this whole episode is that the same leaders who are critical of the Senator today, should he get elected will be at the White House the day after the inauguration looking for handouts.

Seriously, folks, as students of politics, please tell me how Senator Obama explains this away.

http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archi ves/2008/06/barack-obamas-theolgy-an-int er.html

Full transcript of interview:

http://falsani.blogspot.com/2008/04/bara ck-obama-2004-god-factor-interview.html

"GG:
Do you still attend Trinity?

OBAMA:
Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service.  

   Hillary Clinton's win in West VA is a good win for her. Though I wonder now if the Clinton supporters will stop the bullshit argument that Obama victories in red states don't matter, as Hillary supporters are certainly offended at the notion that West VA is meaningless. I'm glad they don't like it so much, so hopefully that garbage won't be spouted any more.

  Now on to another Hillary argument made in recent days that has been clearly disproven. That is the argument that Obama would be a detriment to down ticket races, that Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright will kill us in November and that Hillary is the stronger candidate for down ticket candidates.

Over the past few months, and even more so over the past few weeks, the establishment media has obsessed and obsessed and obsessed about comments made by Jeremiah Wright and the potentially deleterious affects those comments could have upon the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama. Nary an interview went by with the Illinois Senator where he was not asked about his former pastor, and a significant portion (roughly the first third) of the most recent debate centered on Wright and Wright-like insinuations. Wright even received more coverage in the elite media last week than did Hillary Clinton.

But for as much talk and print was dedicated to Wright, his impact on actual elections has been remarkably minimal. Certainly there is a decent proportion of voters telling pollsters that they care about Wright when prompted by the media (though whether they would name Wright as a major concern of theirs in more-properly worded open ended question that did not beg a certain result remains unclear). (It's also unclear as to which voters really care about Wright -- if it's Democratic voters or Independents who would otherwise vote or consider voting for the Democratic nominee, or if it is predominantly the conservative Republican base that would vote for the GOP nominee no matter what.) Yet proof that Wright had a long-lasting negative affect upon Obama, or the Democratic Party for that matter, is decidedly absent in actual election results.

In the run up to the special congressional election in a very Republican-leaning district in Louisiana over the weekend, Republicans and groups supporting the GOP expended hundreds of thousands of dollars -- perhaps even over a million -- trying to tie Democratic nominee Don Cazayoux to Obama (as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) in the hopes of painting Cazayoux as a wrong fit for the district. Although the ads in Louisiana did not feature Wright specifically, the implication was clear, particularly given the fact that Wright dominated the news coverage that week (as noted above). Despite these attacks (or perhaps in spite of them) and despite the fact that the district, which tended to lean about 7 points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections, had been in Republican hands for more than three decades, Cazayoux nevertheless won by a healthy 3-point margin.

Leading into yesterday's primary elections in Indiana and North Carolina there was likewise a significant amount of talk and speculation about whether Wright would sink Obama. Indeed, when prompted by exit pollsters as to whether Wright impacted their vote, about half of Indiana voters yesterday said yes (although, again, I would caution against reading too much into a question that prompts a response like this and would instead wait to see if Wright showed up significantly in an open-ended question in which respondents actually named Wright over other issues like the economy or Iraq before biting too hard). Nevertheless, Obama exceeded expectations in both North Carolina and Indiana, winning the first by a solid margin (by more popular votes than Clinton won Pennsylvania, for instance) and only narrowly losing in the second (by just under two percentage points).

If weeks upon weeks upon weeks of Obama being pummeled in the media couldn't stop him from doing what he needed to last night, and if in the wake of the coverage Obama still isn't a drag on Democratic candidates down ballot -- even in some of the redder areas of the country -- isn't it about time for the media to stop speculating about Obama's potential Wright problem, and in fact just stop talking about Wright altogether? Haven't voters made it clear enough that they care about gas prices and the economy and Iraq -- and George W. Bush, for that matter -- more than they do about a presidential candidate's former pastor? Or are those in the elite press never gonna give him up?

Just wondering, why do white fundie nutjobs and the politicians who love them get a pass while Jeremiah Wright is being allowed to single-handedly bring down Barack Obama?  Click the link to read Frank Rich's excellent piece in the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinio n/04rich.html?em&ex=1210046400&e n=1ab063165842695f&ei=5087%0A

My favorite juicy tidbit:

"BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for "John Hagee Roman Church Hitler," and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

(snip)

"Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee's views? This particular YouTube video -- far from the only one -- was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

"Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it's true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled 'homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.'"

Not that I think Obama's relationship with Wright should not be scrutinized, and not that Hagee's relationship with McCain is anything like the former, but if Wright is sooo scary (and he is), why not Hagee and others like him?

According to this diary, the action called for against CNN in this diary has been effective. Haven't heard of this campaign? It started this weekend with a call to action diary on Dkos asking readers to submit their opinions regarding the Wright issue with CNN. They were sick of looking at it. Of course, that isn't the way news cycles are supposed to work. They aren't supposed to be subject to pressure by political groups, and viewers should be angry when they are. This morning John Roberts declared CNN a "Wright-Free Zone," because their viewers just didn't want to hear it. But it wasn't their viewers, per se, it was a small but effective group on Dkos shilling for their preferred candidate. You can fight back, though, using the info in the DailyKos diary.

Bill Moyers has written a touching lament for the tragedy of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

"All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America..."

All the rest of us, specifically everyone except Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, should hang our heads in shame?

Shame on us... for anything and everything that happens anywhere ever in the history of the world? For every stupid, hateful thing that anyone may ever say or do?

This garbage sounds like a parody of "bleeding heart" liberals by Rush Limbaugh on one of his really bad days!

We should "hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America," when a black Senator can become the leading candidate for President of the United States?

We should "hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America," when the only thing that can keep Barack Obama out of the White House is his own cowardice for not confronting Jeremiah Wright?

I feel so ashamed that Barack Obama didn't have the balls to confront his hate-freak pastor for 20 years!

But look, says Bill Moyers! Jeremiah Wright doesn't scream hate-speech every second of every day!

Jeremiah Wright actually managed to talk to Moyers for a whole hour without screaming hate at whitey!

What a wonderful guy!

And when David Duke or some other KKK lunatic comes on Bill Moyers and manages to avoid the N-word for an hour...

Is Bill Moyers going to tell us how ashamed we should be for condemning the KKK?

This is a new low in low standards!

If you can act sane for 60 minutes, then anything else you may have ever said or done was probably just a freakish aberration!

Hurrah for Barack Obama and his hate-freak pastor!

But none of Moyers' excuses kept Obama from throwing Jeremiah Wright under the bus!

"He finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship..."

Poor little Obama! No choice! Whitey made him renounce his dear friend! We should all be so ashamed!

Now let's all sing "God damn America!" along with Barack and Jeremiah and Bill Moyers, and spend the next 4 years wondering how the Democrats lost another election.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a gas tax! It's lost jobs!  It's NOT Jeramiah Wright!!!!

Ever get the sense that the huge stink Obama's making over Hillary's plan to shift the gas tax from us working folks to the big (and rich) oil companies is just one big effort to distract us from other headlines?  Headlines he'd rather we weren't talking about in the lead-up to the primaries next Tuesday?

So he's finally distanced himself from Wright after 20+ years - for real this time in a presser on Tuesday.  Is that supposed to make us forget that he sat in Wright's church for 20 years?

Yesterday, the Denver Post Editorial made a lot of the same points that other bloggers and reporters have made about Obama's hypocrisy in new-found "surprise" over Wright...