Desperado’s Outpost

With all the controversy continuing to swirl around the Obama/Wright relationship, an important question remains. What did Obama know and when did he know it? There have been many different versions of an answer to this question from Senator Obama, ranging from never hearing these sermons, to them being taken out of context, and yesterday when Obama said this was not the man he met 20 years ago.

A focal point is Wright being “uninvited” to the announcement of Obama’s presidential candidacy. In an interview with the New York Times, Wright had this recollection of the disinvitation, from RealClearPolitics:

“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.”

The Rolling Stone article was from the February 22. 2007 issue and was entitled “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama”, a title later changed to “Destiny’s Child.” It contained excerpts from a sermon by Reverend Wright called 10 Essential Facts About America. Here are some of the “facts” mentioned by Wright:

Racism is alive and well. Racism is the American way.

We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.

Here was the Reverend’s closing line to the sermon:

And, and, and… in light of these in fact God has got to be sick of this s**t!

In the debate in Philadelphia, when questioned about the disinvitation, Obama said:

“I’ve discussed this extensively. Reverend Wright is somebody who made controversial statements but they were not of the sort that we saw that offended so many Americans.“

So if Senator Obama knew enough about Wright’s statements to uninvite him to his presidential announcement, why did he later say he never heard such statements? Here is a fact of my own, these words are nothing new. They reflect who Rev. Wright is and who he has always been. It all comes down to honesty and believability. Obama can’t uninvite Wright to his presidential announcement because of his words and then turn around and say he never heard those words. It only proves Wright’s statement that Obama is a politician doing what politicians do, and that, summed up in one word is, lie.