MSNBC anchor, guests ignore Obama's prior condemnation of anti-Israel statements in church newsletter and by his pastor

Thanks to the right-wing slime machine, it will follow him, right to the voting booth. 

If and when people read their names on the ballot,

too many will see "Pastor Wright" instead of "Barack Obama,"

and too few will see "Bush II" instead of "John McCain."

How vastly different ?

I'm white and I have no problem admitting I'm getting a free ride.  Historically I have had the edge, hell I'm also male.

I don't think the govt created aids but I do feel, that as John Adams said, if a God blesses America for doing right that that same God can damn America for riding dirty.  What's crazy about that ?  The biblical God commited genocide with floods, hes damned the world before, why not a small chunk of it ?

As for Mrs. Obama, she was taken out of context, the complete qoutes are

---Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, would-be First Lady Michelle Obama said, "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

---Then in Madison, she said, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."

I think the bolded items are great reasons to be proud of America.  A lot of the things that make me proud to be an American DID NOT happen in my adult lifetime either.

Anyone can crop a quote, slap a yellow ribbon on their SUV and pretend that white people aren't at an advantage...to ignore 800lb gorillas in the room though eventually is deadly

It seems to me there is a disconnect between Obama renouncing Rev. Wright's anti-American and anti-Semite words and his 20 year relationship with Rev. Wright. For me it just does not add up.

Let me add it up for you, AA.  It's obvious that you've bought into the right-wing smear machine propaganda about Barack Obama and Rev. Wright - why else would you parrot a question that I've heard Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin all ask on their radio pukefests?

Barack Obama began his career as a community activist and civil rights attorney - this would require him to establish very close ties with the black community in his home town.  I remember that in the town where I grew up, there was a very vibrant black community - and a lot of the activities in the black commuinty revolved around one of the two black churches in town; at times, both churches would join forces to unify the black community behind a common goal.

I went to the web site for Trinity UCC, and found a page that lists all their ministries to their community.  Whether you like what Rev. Wright says or not, you have to admit that his church does a lot of outreach to its surrounding community.  And that is probably why so many people (including Sen. Obama and his family) have made Trinity UCC their church, and keeps people coming back for many years.

Remember, AA - a church is more than sermons delivered by its pastor.  It's also interactions with the world around it, and actions taken to make a difference in that world.  Look at the list of their ministries; I've included a link at the bottom of this message.  It looks like Trinity UCC is just the place for someone like Barack Obama who wants to serve his community by keeping actively connected to it. 

http://www.tucc.org/ministries.htm

Col.

Only if one cannot tell the difference between criticism and rhetoric like, "GD America...", and "...The U.S. of KKKA", do you have a point.  

If  you call quotes like those above as "criticism", then there is no need to discuss this further. We simply disagree.

is beyond my understanding.

True.

By MARTIN E. MARTY

Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher, reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently completed a 36-year ministry.

Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above all, its pastor.

In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.

Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago's Divinity School focuses on what it calls "public ministry," which includes both conventional pastoral roles and carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to serve then-struggling Trinity.

Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.

Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace.

To the 10,000 members of Trinity, Jeremiah Wright was, until just a few months ago, "Pastor Wright." Metaphorically, pastor means shepherd. Like members of all congregations, the Trinity flock welcomes strong leadership for organization, prayer, and preaching. One-on-one ministry is not easy with thousands in the flock and when the pastor has national responsibilities, but the forms of worship make each participant feel recognized. Responding to the pastoral call to stand and be honored on Mother's Day, for instance, grandmothers, single mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, gay-and-lesbian couples, all mothers stood when we visited. Wright asked how many believed that they were alive because of the church's health fairs. The members of the large pastoral staff know many hundreds of names, while hundreds of lay people share the ministry.

Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark, half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake, the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of authors, is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts.

In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample, read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.

One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else — experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing): "Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. My wife and I recall but a single overtly political pitch. Wright wanted 2,000 letters of protest sent to the Chicago mayor's office about a public-library policy. Of course, if we had gone more often, in times of profound tumult, we would have heard much more. The United Church of Christ is a denomination that has taken raps for being liberal — for example for its 50th anniversary "God is still speaking" campaign and its pledge to be open and affirming to all, including gay people. In its lineage are Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, America's three most-noted theologians; the Rev. King was much at home there.

Friendship develops through many gestures and shared delights (in the Marty case, stops for sinfully rich barbecue after evening services), and people across the economic spectrum can attest to the generosity of the Wright family.

It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least — edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was formed.

Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet.

JJ, in the context of his speech, what (besides the AIDS thing which, all hyperbole aside, Reagan dropped the ball on, and abstinence-only education helped perpetuate) did he say that was not true?

Yeah Yeah, G D America is some pretty harsh rhetoric.  But are you one to presuppose that God has blessed our nation?  Or that God blesses any nation?  I believe the old testament is full of God damning the world, and the right wing preachers have been basically saying the same thing for YEARS.

And also, which part of what you have heard is racist?  How, exactly, does he portray all white people in some stereotype?  In other words, racially charged and racist are two totally different things.

Finally, I'm assuming you're a Ciinton supporter.  Does it not bother you that Clinton has virtually no chance of winning the nomination?  Unless of course, she steals those "pledged delegates" she believes can go against the will of their district.

If she lose Pennsylvania by a point, she will suspend her campaign. 

DB, thanks for trying, I've been doing it too, but I think it's precisely that threat of an honest discussion that has the bedwetters stuck on GD America and AmeriKKKa, or whatever spinning coin they're mesmerizing themselves with to avoid any discomfort.

I'm getting the feeling that some have put way too much work into their fantasies to let anybody drag them out into the real world.

You and I can go on all day agreeing, because again that is the real issue.  Did you hear today our military had to go help Iraqi army as Shiite militias were kicking their arses.  We have a real problem with the middle east, but its easier to talk about whether a black man has ties to a racist pastor.  We could talk about how a white guy has ties to aN intolerant reverend, or we could focus on how a woman lied about her experiences as First Lady.  NONE OF THESE THINGS HELP OUR ECONOMY, THE PRICE OF OIL OR THE 4,000 MEN AND WOMEN OVERSEAS DYING. MEANWHILE OUR VICE PRESIDENT APATHETICALLY SAYS "THEY VOLUNTEERED" WHEN QUESTIONED ABOUT THE DEATH TOLL. 

That's what we should be talking about imo.