Hi Gang:

Why would the NAACP ,which I would suppose, would want to help elect Barack Obama President,choose to select Reverend Wright to be their keynote speaker ???

Since Wright is doing everything in his power to sabotage Obama,what was the NAACP thinking.

Is the NAACP also out to destroy Obama???

Does this make any sense to you???

hippolips

They invited him, presumably because he's a good speaker (practices every week) and because, being in the news, he'd be a good draw:

'The event, sponsored by the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, the oldest chapter in the nation, drew an estimated 12,000 people to Cobo Hall to hear Wright's remarks.' Wright tells NAACP audience: 'A change is going to come'

Your question begs a question: is Wright 'doing everything in his power to sabotage Obama'? Of course not. It seems to me he's been spending his time recently trying to carefully explain how some comments he made were taken out of context in an attempt to smear Obama.

Wright and Moyers on PBS

Many seem to have ignored the fact that when he made the comments about America's chickens coming home to roost, he was quoting a former Reagan administration official who had said that in the 1980s. People hear what they want to hear and ignore what they don't want to hear. The same thing happened when the Right was up in arms about Kerry speaking about Vietnam atrocities. They conveniently ignored the fact that Kerry was quoting Vietnam Vets who made those statement publicly. In the flap about Dan Rather and CBS showing bogus letters regarding bush's Texas Guard experience, the same people ignored what the secretary to the colonel (the alleged author of the letter) said. She said that the letter was a fake, but that she wrote a similar letter for the colonel. In other words, the content of the letter was true. But no one on the Right seems to have seen that, despite it appearing in the same news articles about her "fake" comments. Apparently, all the facts that fit the pre-conceived opinion are the only ones that are relevant.

Aside from all of the above, I can honestly say that, were I a 70 year-old black man, who had lived through Jim Crow laws, lynchings (The last lynching was in 1964, according to the Tuskeegee Institute.), and second-class citizenship for my people, I might have more than a bit of anger regarding America not living up to her promise of equality for all.

Hi dg:

What still puzzles me is why a Black group[The NAACP] would go out of their way to sabotage a Black candidate for the Presidency.

If I were Black ,this would make no sense to me.

What would make sense would be if the NAACP had Obama as their keynote speaker.

hippolips

An old joke in the black community is "Black Unity." You must remember that blacks, just like whites, do not agree with each other on every issue. (There are even a few black Republicans, even though that has made little sense for almost 60 years.) Obama has been accused of not being "black enough".

Another possibility for this apparent split is that it could be all staged. It does give Obama a vehicle to loudly distance himself from Wright, and in such a way that even many of the doubters will feel good about him. It's all politics, even religion, although I find most black churches more open and honest than many white churches.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright's traveling road show has been all about Jeremiah. He is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and doesn't give a hoot about Obama as long as his personal interests are served.

"Outrageous" and "appalling" were among the adjectives used by Obama in his comments about the Reverend Wright this afternoon.

Democrats have made race a huge issue in the 2008 campaign.

quote:

There are even a few black Republicans, even though that has made little sense for almost 60 years.

Here is part of a response offered by the Frances Rice of the National Black Republican Association in Why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican:

"In order to break the Democrats' stranglehold on the black vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party's economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty, while Republican Party principles of hard work, personal responsibility, getting a good education and ownership of homes and small businesses offer the pathway to prosperity."

Based on the success of social programs, Frances Rice may have a point.

P.S. - I don't think Ms. Rice plagiarized this, as she apparently did with a column about Condi Rice (no relation) written in the Washington Post by Colbert King. Just thought I would go ahead and look that up for y'all

quote:

Your question begs a question

tsaeb and Ken must be right, the world is coming to an end. Even NNN is using "begs the question" incorrectly.

I honestly believe any objective observer would wonder if Moyers served Wright milk and cookies before and after the interview. It was on PBS - did I pay for that?

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Many seem to have ignored the fact that when he made the comments about America's chickens coming home to roost, he was quoting a former Reagan administration official who had said that in the 1980s.

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday...he was on Fox News.... This was a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end....He pointed out...that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammed was in fact true: "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

~ Rev. Jeremiah Wright

video of Wright's sermon in context

This apparently was Wright's sermon in one of the weeks following September 11, 2001. According to an Anderson Cooper 360 blog, the sermon was on September 16.

The link also provides the transcript of the interview with Ambassador Peck on Fox News on October 10, 2001.

Apparently the dates are messed up, or Ambassador Peck really did not say that on Fox News, or there is another interview that the writer could not find.

Is there any better evidence that he was quoting Peck? That and context are what I was originally searching for.


Note: I have no opinion formed on either of the bloggers below, but simply found the information contained to be helpful.

Referenced blog with a more complete transcript

Another blogger with more on the Malcolm X reference

Peck did not say what Wright claimed
as reported by Alan Colmes, the liberal half of Hannity and Colmes, after reviewing Fox's September 15, 2001 transcripts.

Peck never used the phrased "chickens coming home to roost."

What did Peck actually say?

From Man Who Inspired Wright Sermon: I Would Have Walked Out Of His Church

"Peck said that while he never utter the phrase 'chickens coming home to roost,' he was aware that Wright had taken his words and ideas for his own sermon. Nevertheless, he didn't think the right message had been preached.

'I would not endorse it and I wouldn't sign on to it,' he said. 'There were seeds of truth to what he said but he blasted them out of proportion from the clips I have seen.'"


Sorry, DG, I got on a roll. I'll shut up now. For awhile

quote:

Even NNN is using "begs the question" incorrectly.

Hey, sometimes it's difficult to turn out perfectly polished prose in your coffee break.

Obama 'angry' at pastor comments. I don't understand this. Obama earlier said he could no more disown Wright than he could disown his grandmother. So is he disowning his granny now? I doubt Obama's comments will satisfy those who are quite happy to be in high dudgeon over Wright's sermons, while the comments could easily look like old-style Clintonian "throw anything and anyone to the wolves if it'll help you win" politics to others.

And which of Wright's comments is Obama criticising, anyway? If it's the one about HIV being a secret weapon against blacks, fair enough - that one belongs to the world of conspiracy theory.

But what's so terrible about these - "In one clip, from a sermon delivered after the attacks of 11 September 2001, Mr Wright suggested that the US had brought the attacks on itself through its own foreign policy.

And in a passage from a 2003 sermon, he said black Americans should condemn the US because of continuing racial injustice, saying: "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."?

The 9/11 attacks, it should go without saying, were not justified and nobody (and no country) deserves to have such horror visited on them - but that US meddling in the Middle East and Afghanistan was one of the root causes is something of a truism isn't it? Where would Bin Laden have been without Reagan's enthusiastic support for the Mujahadeen "freedom fighters", for example? Wasn't Bin Laden quite explicit in citing US bases in Saudi and US support for Israel among his grievances? Again, there's no justification for al Qaeda's act, but - with Cheney pushing the idea that bombing Iran will solve things, or recent revelations about Bush's most recent 'blowback' leading to Hamas' ascendancy in Gaza, for example - the idea that foreign policy actions can cause unpredictable reactions is maybe a lesson that needs to be learned in the US.

And aren't people allowed to criticise their own country, in whatever terms they please? In most countries people do it all the time - over far more trivial points than institutional racism.

I think, maybe, in distancing himself from Wright, Obama looks weak.

Apparently black Americans have been calling into radio stations all day upset over Wright. Many of the political talking heads believe that Wright's most recent shows at the National Press Club and NAACP Meeting will hurt Obama. But I suppose they don't really know what we will all do when we disappear into the voting booths.

(PS: Fuse quoted The Huffington Post above. If Scotty also agrees with DG within the next hour, immediately go to your nearest bomb shelter)

From Fuse's second link, just a bit more information -

But while Peck acknowledges that he still believes that U.S. foreign policy was in many ways responsible for triggering the terrorist attacks, he also insists that he would not have tolerated the incendiary language that Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor employed.

Peck, who has offered controversial criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank but also warned early against the Iraq Wwar, pointed to several U.S. foreign policy anecdotes that he believed validated his and Wright's premise. Those included testimony, overseen by former Sen. Lee Hamilton, in which intelligence agents testified that the Israel-Palestine conflict had been a main contributor to the proliferation of radical Islamic terrorism. In addition, there was a 60 Minutes interview of Madeline Albright, in which the former Secretary of State said U.S. sanctions on Iraq were worth it despite the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.A bit more information, from

"I probably would have walked out, because you cannot, to me, paint my nation as nothing more than a needless mindless monster. I would say, yes, we have made mistakes. Other nations make mistakes as well, and they haven't been as involved in Middle East," said Peck. "But Reverend Wright was drastically overstating the case... I would not sign on to that procedure and I would never have returned to a place where a man spouted such language, because my perception is that that is not the way to do it. My perception is that you do it my way, with thoughtful efforts to get people to understand what you are talking about."

Peck said that he had not had the chance to view Wright's clips in their entirety. He just returned from a long break only to find out that he had become something of a mini-political celebrity due to his connection to the sermon. He also said that it was unfair to truly judge Wright strictly on these five-second clips, that there were "seeds of truth" to what the Reverend had to say, "but he blasted them out of proportion."

In his now notorious sermon, Wright highlighted issues analogous to these, as evidence that America had helped aggravate the very terrorists who were striking out. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye," he said.

What has not been shown in those clips is that Wright prefaced and concluded that remark by saying he was paraphrasing Peck.

"A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant," he said, "not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice..."

Peck said that while he never utter the phrase "chickens coming home to roost," he was aware that Wright had taken his words and ideas for his own sermon. Nevertheless, he didn't think the right message had been preached.

And just a bit more of what Wright said, from AnswerPool -

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

When you consider all that Wright said, and all of America's involvement in the Middle East, from promises made when the West cut up their land after WWI, through supporting brutal dictator after brutal dictator, (including Operation Ajax, which removed the legitimately democratically-elected administration of Irana's Prime Minister and his cabinet from power), and add the US's involvement in supporting (and overthrowing and attempting to overthrow) various leaders in Latin America, plus a few misadventures in Africa, you may start to understand how someone might say that the chickens are coming home to roost. (Maybe "the cows are coming home" might sound better to white America.)

An old commercial for Yuban Coffee used to state that its company slogan came from its founder, John Arbuckle. The slogan explained why Yuban Coffee was a bit more expensive than most other brands. The slogan was, "You Get What You Pay For". I really hope he was wrong. I fear that he was right.

"(PS: Fuse quoted The Huffington Post above. If Scotty also agrees with DG within the next hour, immediately go to your nearest bomb shelter)"

It may be too late. Gat agreed with me on DP a few hours ago. What's next? Armageddon? The Big Quake? The Cancellation of Desperate Housewives?

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
"(PS: Fuse quoted The Huffington Post above. If Scotty also agrees with DG within the next hour, immediately go to your nearest bomb shelter)"

That's funny, DG, except that Scotty doesn't post anymore, and neither does Lighteningrod. There isn't really anyone left for you guys to argue politics with, or didn't any of you notice? Differing opinions on a subject, always make for more interesting reading, IMHO.

I agree. However, I'm told that holding hard-to-justify positions tends to reduce one's desire to post.

You mean like saying Peck said something about chickens roosting way back in the 1980s?

I don't think Mr. Peck really appreciated the Reverend Wright ascribing the comments to him, on the Sunday after 911. What the blazes did Peck say that even resembles what Wright said? Boiling it down, didn't Wright basically say that we deserved the attack on the WTC because of what we or our predecessors did to Native Americans, slaves, and to foreign nations in military actions? I would have walked out of the church on that Sunday, too.

Scotty was served a lot of sarcasm, often crossing the lines of condescension, in my opinion. yeah, it's just written words coming through an electronic signal into your computer, but I think he hung in there for a long time when most people would have said, "To hell with this."

"The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light."

~ Robert E. Lee

Good advice, even for Yankees

I certainly hope that Scotty, LR, kwll and others will drop in more often during the political season.

quote:

I certainly hope that Scotty, LR, kwll and others will drop in more often during the political season.

Hey, when Clinton/Obama finally self-destruct and McCain wins, you maybe won't be able to shut them up...

You're right, Fuse. I was wrong about the time; I shouldn't have trusted my memory.

"What the blazes did Peck say that even resembles what Wright said?"

If you don't see that Peck's acknowledgment "that he still believes that U.S. foreign policy was in many ways responsible for triggering the terrorist attacks" is very similar in meaning to what Wright said, nothing I can say will make you see it. But when a man says X is part of the cause of Y, and another says it more crudely and adds a few things, most people who are willing to look at the entire context and are able to see the similarities.

By the way, some of those who left, unlike me, had great difficulty saying that they were wrong, even when it was so obvious that a blind man could had seen it. An exchange of ideas, a discussion, requires some degree of honesty, some recognition of times when the other side is right.

A discussion also requires some knowledge of the subject matter beyond simple faith that one's position is right. If one doesn't have that, then one should ask questions and learn. Life requires homework.
--------
NNN, will those guys blame bush for McCain's failures (He will have some; if not, he would be the first president not to have some.), or will it still be Clinton's fault?

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
By the way, some of those who left, unlike me, had great difficulty saying that they were wrong, even when it was so obvious that a blind man could had seen it. An exchange of ideas, a discussion, requires some degree of honesty, some recognition of times when the other side is right.

A discussion also requires some knowledge of the subject matter beyond simple faith that one's position is right. If one doesn't have that, then one should ask questions and learn. Life requires homework.

I think you have a valid point, DG. I don't contribute to the political threads very often, but I do read them. One of the people I mentioned, in particular, never conceded he was mistaken, even when presented with the irrefutable facts.