A July 18 CBSNews.com article on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) July 18 speech about poverty in urban areas asserted, “At one point, Obama seemed to take aim at [former Sen. John] Edwards [D-NC], who has tried to make poverty the main issue of his candidacy.” The article quoted Obama -- “This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign; it is the cause that led me to a life of public service almost twenty-five years ago” -- and went on to make the following false assertion: “In fact, Obama pointed out he turned down lucrative offers at major law firms to return to the south side of Chicago as a community organizer, while Edwards went on to make millions as a trial lawyer before beginning his career in public service.” But in the speech, Obama did not, in fact, mention turning down offers from law firms, and while the article suggested Obama criticized Edwards for making “millions as a trial lawyer before beginning his career in public service,” Obama did no such thing. The full audio of Obama's speech is here.

The article quoted Edwards' campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, who responded to Obama's speech in part by saying: “I have no reason to think that Senator Obama was talking about Senator Edwards at all.”

From Obama's July 18 speech:

OBAMA: But poverty is not just a function of simple economics. It's also a matter of where you live. There are vast swaths of rural America and block after block in our cities where poverty is not just a crisis that hits pocketbooks, but a disease that infects every corner of the community. I'll be outlining my rural agenda in the coming weeks, but today I want to talk about what we can do as a nation to combat the poverty that persists in our cities.

This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign, it's the cause that led me to a life of public service almost 25 years ago.

I was just two years out of college when I first moved to the South Side of Chicago to become a community organizer. I was hired by a group of churches that were trying to deal with steel plant closures that had devastated the surrounding neighborhoods. Everywhere you looked, businesses were boarded up, schools were crumbling, teenagers were standing aimlessly on street corners, without jobs, without hope, without prospects for the future.

What's most overwhelming about urban poverty is that it's so difficult to escape -- it's isolating and yet it's everywhere. If you are an African-American child unlucky enough to be born in one of the poor neighborhoods of this nation, you are most likely to start life hungry or malnourished. You are less likely to start with a father in your household, and if he's there, there's a 50-50 chance that he never finished high school and the same chance he doesn't have a job. Your school isn't likely to have the right books or the best-trained teachers. You're more likely to encounter gang activities than after-school activities. And if you can't find a job because the most successful businessman in your neighborhood is a drug dealer, you're more likely to join that gang yourself. Opportunity is scarce, role models are few, and there is little contact with the normalcy of life outside those streets.

What you learn when you spend time in these neighborhoods trying to solve these problems is that there are no easy solutions and there are no perfect arguments. And you come to understand that for the last four decades, both ends of the political spectrum have been talking past one another.

[...]

Hope is found in what works. In those South Side neighborhoods where I worked, hope was found in after-school programs we created, and the job training programs we put together, and the organizing skills we taught residents so that they could stand up to a government that wasn't standing up for them. Hope's found here at THEARC, where you've provided thousands of children with shelter from the streets and a home away from home. And if you travel a few hours north of here, you will find hope in 97 neighborhood blocks in the heart of Harlem in New York City in New York state.

From CBSNews.com:

At one point, Obama seemed to take aim at Edwards, who has tried to make poverty the main issue of his candidacy.

“This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign,” Obama stressed just nine minutes into his comments. “It is the cause that led me to a life of public service almost twenty-five years ago.”

The timing of Obama's speech -- scheduled on the same day that Edwards scheduled his tour's finale in Kentucky -- suggests that Obama plans on fighting Edwards for title of defender of the poor. In fact, Obama pointed out he turned down lucrative offers at major law firms to return to the south side of Chicago as a community organizer, while Edwards went on to make millions as a trial lawyer before beginning his career in public service.

Jonathan Prince, Edwards' campaign manager, told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that while Obama had “been working hard throughout his life to make a difference,” Edwards was “committed to the issue of poverty long before he was in public life.”

Asked about Obama's comment, Prince responded by emphasizing Edwards' record on the issue, adding, “I have no reason to think that Senator Obama was talking about Senator Edwards at all.”