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Wright's Re-Emergence Roils Obama's Political Waters

Posted on: Monday, 28 April 2008, 06:00 CDT

By Kathy Kiely

A public relations blitz by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is reigniting a racially charged controversy at a time when Obama is trying to convince party leaders he can appeal to white, blue-collar voters critical to capturing the White House.

In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Obama acknowledged that speeches Sunday and today by Wright come at an awkward moment for his presidential campaign. Obama did not dispute Fox anchor Chris Wallace's assertion that Wright's re-emergence "obviously isn't helpful to your campaign."

Wright, who is scheduled to speak at 9 a.m. today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., lamented his "public crucifixion" during a 45-minute sermon Sunday in Dallas and later while delivering the keynote address to an NAACP convention in Detroit.

Wright said the people who call him "bombastic" and "divisive" don't understand a religious experience that's different from theirs.

"I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and march on the picket lines," he said. "The black religious experience is different. ... We do it a different way. Different does not mean deficient."

Before his speech in Detroit, some wondered whether Wright would be apologetic about the inflammatory sermons that thrust him into the spotlight. "I'm hoping he sees some good in America," said Melvin Taylor, 40, an administrative assistant in an optical office north of Detroit. "No one will say there haven't been atrocities in this country to people of color, but there have been gains as well."

During a nearly hour-long interview aired Friday on PBS, Wright said he had been "crucified by corporate-owned media." He did not recant his controversial sermons -- including one in which he suggested that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were payback for "terrorism" that the U.S. government had perpetrated abroad in military actions against Libya, Panama, Iraq and in the nuclear attacks on Japan that ended World War II.

He said he is being exposed to "vitriolic hatred" and death threats because Americans "would rather cling to what they are taught" than come to grips with facts about their government's acts of oppression against Native Americans, African-Americans and foreign civilians caught in the crossfire of war.

Obama said Wright -- former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago -- had not consulted with him about his decision to take his case to the public.

The appearances broke weeks of silence that Wright maintained following a speech last month in which Obama criticized his former pastor for his fiery statements but defended him as the product of a generation shaped by racial prejudice. The Illinois senator took the same tack Sunday, conceding Wright's comments were causing him political problems.

"I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past," he said. "The fact that he's my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue."

The likely Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, seized on that remark, telling reporters at a Sunday news conference in Florida, "If he believes that, then it will probably be a political issue."

McCain said he continues to oppose plans by the Republican Party in North Carolina -- which, along with Indiana, holds the next presidential primaries on May 6 -- to air an ad in the state's gubernatorial race that makes an issue of Obama's relationship with Wright.

The Arizona senator didn't mind making an issue of Wright himself, however, telling reporters that some of the Chicago minister's critiques of American policies are "beyond belief."

On Fox, Obama said Wright was wrong "in only cataloguing the bad of America and not doing enough to lift up the good" but reiterated his plea for understanding.

"He went through experiences I never went through. I am the beneficiary of the civil rights movement," said Obama. Obama is 46; Wright is 66.

Whatever difficulties it might cause his campaign, Obama said, Wright is entitled to respond to critics who have "caricatured him."

Contributing: Kathleen Gray and Robin Erb of the Detroit Free Press (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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