Good News

Have you -- or maybe one of your parents -- received one of those emails damning Barack Obama as a Muslim or closet Islamic terrorist setting up to destroy America from the inside?

Yep, all lies, urban legend already debunked, but designed to sow seeds of doubt in the bigoted voter, the 9/11-blinkered patriot, the Islam-averse Jewish voter.

But a lie, as Winston Churchill so famously intoned, "gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Is there anything candidate Obama might do to once and for all expose this story to light?

How about a mini-scandal with his former (Christian) Minister:

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

Leave aside the question of whether people whose ancestors were kidnapped from their homes and families forever first in their homeland and then under their domestic enslavement, over and over again should bless and curse the nation built on their torture, Obama's campaign started simply:

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

But that wasn't enough and Obama knew it, so again with the blazing-fast response, tonight the campaign took three concrete steps to putting the pastor behind him.

First, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright stepped down from his "honorary membership on the campaign's African American Religious Leadership Committee."

Second, Obama blogs his detailed response on Huffington Post. He denounces and later in the same paragraph he rejects (witty touch), he provides context:

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn...

...Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

With Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

Third, he appears live on MSNBC:



While it's still too early to judge the entire net effect, Zacapoet suspects it a work of genius:

The false meme of being a Muslim was dragging Obama down in the polls so that his national lead over hillary was only 6-8%. But now that even Sean Hannity has recanted and is berating Obama for being a Christian, that drag should soon whither away.

My guess is the Obama camp was holding back on the Wright story until they could use it to jolt the psyche of the electorate regarding the phony Muslim accusations. The people who vote for Obama, the liberals, high-school or better voters, Independents, don't really care about what Obama's minister said, so long as he wasn't saying it from a church of Devil Worshipers.

As a Catholic who goes to the Lutheran Church because of the radically right-wing views of my Church, I fully understand why Obama is in the predicament he's in regarding Wright. People who participate in religions generally do so because of their links to the community. If you look at polls you see that religious conservatives don't vote for Obama anyway. People who are tolerant in their religious views, likely Obama voters, will generally tolerate the rants of Obama's former minister.

As The Field elucidates:

The bottom line: The more controversy around Obama’s Christian pastor, and his refusal to throw him under the bus, the less Obama will have to beat back the (more potentially destructive, ‘though false) Muslim smears in the fall. One might even say that the Wright controversy is, for Obama, a gift from a god that “speaks in mysterious ways.”

Once again, people are worrying too much about “what might offend others,” a signature of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s politics. But beyond the partisan feigners of outrage, or the “concern trolls” fretting aloud about how “others” could be turned off, who is really offended out there?

We’re in the 21st Century now, when a certain amount of crazy is expected from all religious leaders.

Amen to all that.