Keep "Repudiating" 'Till He Gets It Wright

Last weekend the sickening race pimp landed on his protege's presidential campaign like Kirk Douglas' foot bisecting the legs of several different men in Tough Guys.  The effect was immediate, and the poobahs of Obamanation evidently didn' take long (or, rather, AS long) this time to realize it, as they rolled out the latest stage of their candidate's slow backpedal from Uncle Jerry on Tuesday morning:

Link: sevenload.com

BO was "outraged" at Wright's comments, even though they were reiterations of what the "retired rev'rund" has been saying in Obama's divine presence for over twenty years.  BO was "saddened by the spectacle," even though spectacle was the whole point of Wright's NAACP and NPC appearances.  The person BO saw last weekend "was not the man [he] met twenty years ago" - which is a nullity at best, since a lot has happened to that man over that space of time that only BO himself allegedly somehow missed.  BO calls Wright's comments bigoted while studiously avoiding calling Wright himself a bigot, then directly contradicts Wright by claiming that his words do not represent the black church even though his successor at Trinity United picked up right where he left off.  BO says Wright's bigoted comments do not portray his own values and beliefs, despite the fact that he's discipled under Wright for nearly his entire adult life.

BO can't say much to Wright's labeling of his earlier surgical attempts at disavowing him as "political posturing," other than to declare that "if he believes that, he doesn't know me," other than the past twenty years of their close "spiritual" walk.  BO in essence laments Wright's reiteration of all the aforeclipped wacko extremist conspiracism in his past sermons for the political damage it's causing him by making his Oreo Discourse look even more like the sham it always was.  Because, of course, this is all about HIM, and HIS political fortunes, not racial harmony or the honor of the American people.

BO states "unequivocally" that Wright "does not speak for him or his campaign," even though he's said that before, just as unconvincingly, which is why he adds the suffix, "I mean it."  Which suggests that he didn't mean it before, and in turn raises the question of whether he means it now, either.

What I did NOT hear in these ostensibly prepared remarks was an actual repudiation of Jeremiah Wright himself, or a once and for all break with the man, which would seem to be a prerequisite if BO expects the American voter to take his painfully careful "repudiations" seriously.  Such a divorce, as I've written before, would have been dubious six weeks ago when this Wright Stuff regurgitated onto the public radar; it would be even more eyeroll-inducing now.  But it would still be better than all this pussyfooting around that is contributing to the cratering of his campaign scarely any less than Uncle Jerry's gleeful bile-spewing itself.  Ditto a "disowning" that he claimed he couldn't do a month ago based not on his mentor's diseased worldview but on his calling BO out personally.

Sometimes I fear I get so cynical about this sort of thing that my commentary might come across as passionless.  Thus I bring you the gut-take of Ace of Spades, which I can't help admiring for its JR-like viscerality:

Two words:

Bull. Fucking. Shit. This is not a man who is shy about revealing whatever is on his lunatic, racist mind. The idea that Barack didn't know is so preposterous as to make me physically angry.

For the Love of God Himself, This shit was said in Obama's "church" every other Sunday and has always been available on videotape! Obama knew about this stuff for at least a year already (and of course he knew about it for twenty years, but we can definitely pin the last year on him).

Last time he defended Wright by excusing it as the anger of a man who had grown up in a more racist period of history.

Now when it threatens him, the very same statements are "shocking" and "disgusting."

Sometimes I also fear that my harried schedule so contracts my time for the composition of thoughtful, contemplative commentary that the eloquence that has, in the past, been my trademark (or so others have told me) has faded from my ongoing narrative.  So, to provide the other stylistic bookend to my concurring opinion, here is Brother Trunk's reaction: 

What had changed between March 18 and April 29? On March 18, Obama explicitly rejected the opportunity to denounce Wright as the "crank or demagogue" he so transparently is. He was like the grandmother who loved him unconditionally. He could not be disowned. On April 29, Obama had second thoughts. He had reconsidered. He had changed his mind. Wright could be disowned. Why? Obama explained:

[W]hat I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that -- that I am about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the -- the commonality in all people.

Obama returned to this theme in response to another question:

I want to use this press conference to make people absolutely clear that obviously whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me. I don't -- 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.

And the third time around on this theme Obama got to the nub of it:

[A]t a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me. It's a -- it is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign.

In Obama's eyes, the most serious wrongdoing in Wright's statements is their disrespect of Obama. From the revered father figure who could not be disowned, Wright has become the the father from whom separation must be achieved in favor of his own identity, or the boorish relative who cannot be tolerated. The adolescent grandiosity and adolescent pettiness of Obama's remarks are perhaps the most shocking revelations of this entire episode.

Unless and until you remember who and what Barack Hussein Obama is.  He's the New Messiah, of which Jesus Christ was but the rough draft.  He's come to save America from itself, from its primitive "clinging" to "guns" and "patriotism" and "religion," from the "bitterness" derived of "economic injustice" that he will "[W]right," and from the "ignorance" that prevents the unanimous acceptance of his hard-leftism as revered "Gospel".  He's not on "a mission from God," he's on a mission AS "God".  And on Tuesday he, in essence, spoke the words to his "master" that Darth Vader did to Obi-wan Kenobi in Star Wars:

"I've been waiting for you...We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.

The vast bulk of the Enemy Media was not bashful about echoing its slobbering endorsements of those sentiments.  Take Andrew Sullivan, for example:

That was a very impressive, clear and constructive re-framing of his core message of his candidacy; and a moment given to him by Wright. No one will ever be able to say that Obama threw his father-figure and pastor under the bus. We all know that the reverse happened. We also know that this clear repudiation of Wright's toxic, indeed "ridiculous" views on AIDS, 9/11 and permanent immiseration of people of color could not have happened unless Wright had made it necessary. Skeptics may wonder whether Wright actually deliberately did Obama a favor. I doubt it. But a favor it unintentionally is.

Maybe God does bring good out of bad. Maybe these racial and cultural divides can help us understand how better to move beyond them. Cynics may scoff - and certainly will. They will parse every nuance and try to paint Obama as another cynical, positioning pol. I don't believe it. He has more sincerity and integrity than the vast majority of politicians, more honesty, and more resilience in a very tough spot.

And today, we found that he can fight back, and take a stand, without calculation and in what is clearly a great amount of personal difficulty and political pain. It's what anyone should want in a president. It makes me want to see him succeed more than ever. It's why this country needs to see him succeed more than ever.

Didja get that?  Uncle Jerry did Ba-ROCK a "favor" by not just playing the part of the Black Klansman, but actually BEING one off of whom BO could triangulate.  Because otherwise Americans would just naturally have thought the man into whose heart Sullivan alone can look unobstructed and see nothing but a crystal sea of sincerity and integrity to be a racist, extremist lunatic.  Because that's how just how racist "white America" thinks of black people, and that's one more sin from which False Messiah has come to save us.  The fact that Jeremiah Wright personifies pigmentational neoNazi thought, and that Senator Obama discipled under him for twenty years, is pure coincidence.

The New York Times continued the underlying common thread of tossing Rev'rund Wright under the bus to save Our Mr. Hussein's ass:

Last month, Mr. Obama delivered a speech in which he said he disapproved of Mr. Wright’s racially charged comments but said that the pastor still played an important role in his spiritual life.

It was a distinction we were not sure would sit well with many voters. But what mattered more was the speech’s powerful commentary on the state of race relations in this country. We hoped it would open the door to a serious, healthy and much-needed discussion on race.

Mr. Wright has not let that happen. In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, he embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. He said the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks. He suggested that America was guilty of “terrorism” and so had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself.

By "not sit well with many voters," the Times meant...well, see Ace's quote above.  Beats me, then, why they thought the Oreo Discourse would lead to "a serious, healthy, much-needed discussion on race."  It seems to me that we "discuss race" altogether too much; or, rather, liberals do.  They can't leave that past behind, just as they can't leave the Great Depression behind, or Vietnam, or any of the other geneses of their rancid ideological pathologies, because they are all the Left's collective self-identity.  They don't WANT any racial reconciliation; they don't WANT the realization to seep into the public consciousness that the original goals of the mid-20th-century civil rights movement (which were opposed by the Democrat Party of the time) have almost entirely been achieved, and that the problems that afflict "black America" now are predominantly, if not entirely, the product of the liberal welfare state and a Democrat Party that cannot remain nationally competitive without maintaining its, er, white-knuckled grip on the black vote.  Any genuinely serious, much less healthy, race discussion would acknowledge these things and become a celebration of the sort of unity that Barack Hussein Obama claims to seek.

That's not the discussion the Times wants to have.  Their discussion would sound a lot more like the sermons of Jeremiah Wright.  It's his emergence into the public spotlight that has served to so embarrass them AND their be-deified candidate that they sacrifice Uncle Jerry on the alter of "St. Barry's" political ambitions, in which they themselves have so shameless invested.

The Washington Post was a step better on the media continuum in that they acknowledge the damage the Jeremiah Wright Phenomenon has done to the notion of BO's judgment, which he has made the cornerstone of his candidacy.  Then they seemingly blink, fall back under the Obamanational trance, and conclude that it doesn't matter because, after all, this man is God Incarnate:

It just doesn't matter, gentlebeings.  It doesn't matter that Barack Hussein Obama followed Jeremiah Wright for twenty years.  It doesn't matter that he let his head be pumped full of praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and vile libels like the plausiblity that AIDS is a genocidal tool of the U.S. government to kill African Americans and the U.S. military is no morally different from al Qaeda.  It doesn't matter that, at best, BO's judgment sucks ditchwater, and at worst, he heartily concurs with "Rev'rund" Wright's hate-filled Marxist-Leninist atheology and is dishonestly claiming otherwise in order to salvage his electability - ironically, exactly that of which Uncle Jerry accused him last weekend.  The WaPo says that America needs St. Barry so much that we simply must take it on blind faith that "his entire career is antithetical to the divisiveness of the Reverend Wright’s comments."  And if we elect him, and come to find that he does take after his surrogate father, that "the fruit don't fall far from the tree" after all, well, that'll just be one more bit of "cynicism" that President Ba-ROCK will "force" us out of.

Whereas the Times belatedly "discovers" the Sith Master (not, in this case, John McCain) but keeps right on worshiping his apprenctice, and the Post touches on Obama's piss-poor judgment as an academic exercise divorced from any practical application, the Boston Globe bitch-slaps Ba-ROCK and doesn't run away from the electoral implications:

The Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. had said it all before: how God damns America for its unfairness, how American policies brought on the 9/11 attacks, how Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is a great American, and more.

But for weeks, Barack Obama portrayed such statements as isolated soundbites, deeply offensive to him, but nonetheless taken out of context by political enemies to create a negative impression of an otherwise caring pastor. It wasn’t until Wright took to the airwaves over the past week to defend himself and take fresh ownership of the statements that Obama became fed up.

Now, after Obama’s uncategorical repudiation yesterday of the man who presided at his wedding and the baptism of his daughters, voters and other political observers will inevitably wonder what took so long - and how Obama could have misjudged someone to whom he was very close. …

On Monday, at the National Press Club in Washington, Wright took another shot: “I said to Barack Obama last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.’ ”

If Wright really had issued such a warning, Obama should have smelled trouble immediately. His failure to do so, and his decision to portray Wright as a distraction, inevitably raises the question of whether Obama is too naive to be president - the very insinuation he ridicules on the campaign trail.

Or, for those of us far too, yes, cynical to swallow such seemingly fantastical notions without choking and gagging uncontrollably, the question of whether Obama actually agrees with Wright's twisted view of "king and country".  Which would make him too evil to be president.

I also can't help but notice the permanency of Wright's grievance mentality.  Not even his protege rising to the ultimate pinnacle of power can persuade him of the "redemptibility" of the system he endlessly and viciously disparages?  Does that not at least strongly imply that he believes that America is irredeemably corrupt, racist, EVIL, and therefore must be destroyed?  And would not the pronounced policy prescriptions of Barack Hussein Obama, cloaked under a veneer of "naivete," go to great lengths to bring about that ultimate fate?

Not to get all conspiracist myself, but I'm not a big believer in coincidences that are that pregnant.

You want to know the ultimate irony?  NONE of this may matter, because if Newt Gingrich and the New York Post are correct - and given what we've seen of the Jeremiah Wright World Tour 2008 so far, there's no reason to think they're not - the "retired" "pastor" of Trinity United Church has only begun to strike back at his belatedly "ungrateful" pupil:

“After twenty years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn’t know about Jeremiah’s views during those years, that he wasn’t familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn’t hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal,” said the source, who has deep roots in Wright’s Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter…

The source noted that the roots of Wright’s disillusionment with Obama began last year after the Illinois senator unexpectedly yanked him from participating in the public announcement of his presidential campaign.

“That’s why Jeremiah revealed … that he had actually been at the [announcement] hotel and prayed privately with the Obama family before the official declaration,” the source told The Post…

The source added, “After twenty years of loving Barack like he is one of their own, after he was embraced by this congregation as a brother in Christ, after his pastor was a father figure to him and gave him credibility in a city he had not grown up in and in a black community that was suspect of someone from Hawaii and Harvard, he thanks him by not allowing him to speak publicly at his announcement last year?

“A lot of people in the church believe they were there for this man when no one else was, and a lot of people don’t believe it any more when Obama claims he loves the man who did so much for him,” the source added.

Ya gotta like AP's Fatal Attraction metaphor.  What I'm having more difficulty wrapping my mind around is the epiphany that I actually agree with "Rev'rund" Wright on one thing: that Obama "didn’t know about Jeremiah’s views during those years, that he wasn't familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn’t hear what Jeremiah said," is, indeed, nonsense.  Or "Bull.  Bleeping.  Bleep." in Ace-speak.

Much as King Ba-ROCK and Queen Michelle might plaintively want to "move on" from this PR millstone, I don't think their estranged guru will grant them that supplication.  If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Uncle Jerry's vomit reservoir may be well nigh bottomless.

UPDATE: Double-H has a list of suggested questions for Tim Russert to ambush False Messiah with on this Sunday's Press the Meat.  And no, I'm not taking bets on the likelihood of Russert asking them, or that he won't borrow a pair of Chris Matthews' kneepads for the occasion.