Friday, May 2, 2008

hold the phone

Before you start feeling rosy about Obama now that he's renounced Rev Wright, you need to read this article by Charles Krauthammer (awesome guy).

Not only is his rhetoric great, but just the first quote he uses from Obama makes you say "ohhh yeaaaaaah! he DID say that" and now he's saying something completely different.

Selected favorite parts:


"I can no more disown him (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother."

-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18

At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright's latest comments -- Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.

What were Obama's three citations? Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming 9/11 on American "terrorism."

But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.

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