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WaPo Feels Pain of 'Marginalized and Vilified' Church of Rev. Wright
NewsBusters ^ | 6/15/08 | Tim Graham

Posted on 06/26/2008 1:43:11 PM PDT by Unam Sanctam

The front page of Sunday’s Washington Post featured an article headlined "At Obama’s Former Church, Hurt Lingers: Black Congregations Feel Marginalized by Uproar." The story that followed by Post reporters Eli Saslow and Hamil Harris took a sympathetic tack toward the poor, poor Jeremiah Wright and his followers without making any attempt to address the bizarre statements that caused such controversy. America deserved 9/11 for its own terrorism? The federal government created AIDS for black genocide? At their most specific, it was defined simply as "a landslide of negative video" and "right-wing political attacks" that left Obama’s fellow believers "marginalized and vilified."

Are the Post’s editors and reporters trying to suggest that bizarre lies like the government created AIDS to kill black people should not be marginalized? They shouldn’t be criticized? What sort of role does The Washington Post take as a newspaper, to suggest that vicious falsehoods should apparently not be condemned when they emanate from "marginalized" communities?

Here’s the meat of the Saslow and Harris story, lamenting the tragedy at Trinity United Church of Christ:

'Obama, the biracial presidential candidate who has pledged to unite Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, blacks and whites, was going to provide an opening for Trinity and other black churches to shatter their stereotypes and bolster their national presence. Instead, a landslide of negative video of Trinity's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and right-wing political attacks left Obama's former church and others like it even more marginalized and vilified.

'As the controversy over Trinity crescendoed earlier this month, the church's new pastor, Otis Moss III, released a statement to his congregation: "We, the community of Trinity, are concerned, hurt, shocked, dismayed, frustrated, fearful and heartbroken. . . . We are a wounded people and our wounds, the bruises from our encounter with history, have scarred our very souls."

'A product of black liberation theology, it teaches members to identify with their African roots and take pride in the African American experience. Sermons sometimes mingle biblical lessons with those learned from slavery or the civil rights movement.

'Last month, when asked why he wanted to preach at Trinity, Moss said: "This is a place where the struggle continues, where you can talk about real issues. We can recognize social injustice and then take it on."

'Obama has largely sought to avoid discussing race or racism during his presidential campaign, except when it comes to this country's ability to overcome it. His major speech on the issue in March was an attempt to quell controversy over Wright without making race part of his political platform. The Democrat casts himself as a unifier -- the son of a white American woman and a black African man, shaped by white, working-class grandparents and South Chicago's housing projects.

'"We may have different stories," he said in March, "but we hold common hopes." And commonality, Obama often indicates, is what Americans should spend their energy discussing, instead of what he termed Wright's "divisive and destructive" rhetoric.

'Because of that divide, Obama sent a letter to the church in late May tendering his family's resignation. Obama explained that it was with "some sadness" that he made the decision to leave the church where he discovered Christianity, married his wife and had his children baptized, but that he no longer felt comfortable being associated with the church's provocative rhetoric.'

Again, the Post reporters utterly avoided quoting Wright’s "provocative" statements at all, which would make it quite a bit harder to gin up sympathy for the people who laugh and clap and cheer and jump up and down at the vicious falsehoods that Wright spews. There’s no mention of his strong support for anti-Semitic and often anti-American Rev. Louis Farrakhan, no mention of the strange articles in the church newsletter, and no quotation of his latest remarks at the Detroit NAACP or the National Press Club. Instead, the Post repeated the line that Wright was unfairly caricatured:

'Wright, the author of more than 4,000 sermons, became a public caricature through inflammatory, 30-second sound bites. He reiterated his most divisive opinions during an appearance at the National Press Club in late April.'

The AIDS conspiracy, only a "divisive opinion"? The Post also offered liberal black experts suggesting Wright was speaking the truth, and white people can't handle the truth:

'"If a politician wants to move up in government, he can come to church and jump and shout," said the Rev. Barbara Reynolds, a lecturer at Howard University's School of Divinity. "But it is not okay to go to a church where they are speaking truth to power and talking about racism, sexism and capitalism."

'Ron Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor, said: "Barack Obama is running for president in a country where 70 percent of the people are white. They demand that he align himself to their dominant view."'

It reads like a whitewash of a radical black church.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: blackchurch; obama; wp; wright

1 posted on 06/26/2008 1:43:12 PM PDT by Unam Sanctam
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: Unam Sanctam

Couldn’t finish reading it. The post snippets made my blood pressure rise to dangerous levels.


3 posted on 06/26/2008 1:49:38 PM PDT by messierhunter
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To: Unam Sanctam
...What sort of role does The Washington Post take as a newspaper, to suggest that vicious falsehoods should apparently not be condemned when they emanate from "marginalized" communities?

Shameless propagandists for "the cause," that's what.

4 posted on 06/26/2008 1:52:18 PM PDT by smedley64 (Dems go all-in every 4 years with a 7-2 offsuit marxist, hoping to hit the flop big just one time.)
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To: Unam Sanctam; All
Church & Hate
5 posted on 06/26/2008 1:56:03 PM PDT by musicman
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To: Unam Sanctam

Self fulfilling prophecy here. They celebrated being outcasts for decades, and attacked America and “whitey” for making them outcasts, even though they weren’t.

Now they’re really outcasts, as their “messiah” threw them under the bus, and the media proclaims, “Look at these poor victims! Look at what white America has done to these lovely people.”

The funny thing now is that they can’t lash out the way they used to do. They can’t blame “whitey” in wild rants at the pulpit anymore. It must be frustrating, to have the microscope on them, preventing them from acting like wild fools.... the way they did for decades.


6 posted on 06/26/2008 1:58:40 PM PDT by Fox_Mulder77
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To: Unam Sanctam

Cockroaches in the sunshine.


7 posted on 06/26/2008 1:59:28 PM PDT by Steamburg (Your wallet speaks the only language most politicians understand.)
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To: Unam Sanctam
Instead, a landslide of negative video of Trinity's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and right-wing political attacks left Obama's former church and others like it even more marginalized and vilified.

I've seen Mr Wright engaged in live interviews and the video clips I've seen pretty well match the person I saw during the interviews. The man sells hate and divisiveness...period.

The good news is that the print media is on a their own death watch, but they're not smart enough to figure out why. Could it be because people don't trust them to report the facts about events? Could it be because we're tired of the print media trying to foist their own political agenda as news? How many times do I have to hear: "According to the latest ABC (NBC, CBS, CNN, etc.) poll...". As soon as I hear that, I hit the BS kill switch, 'cause I know what's coming is that station's agenda position. I can construct and word a poll in such a way that I get exactly what I want as responses. News agencies conduct polls to support their positions, not to discover facts. You clowns can't go out of business fast enough for me...

8 posted on 06/26/2008 2:11:01 PM PDT by econjack (Some people are as dumb as soup.)
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To: Unam Sanctam

Why is it necessarily a bad thing for Trinity UCC to be criticized? Other people get criticism all the time.


9 posted on 06/26/2008 2:19:20 PM PDT by popdonnelly (Does Obama know ANYONE who likes America, capitalism, or white people?)
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To: Unam Sanctam

Notice how, in the left, it’s always the worst of the worst who are painted as victims.


10 posted on 06/26/2008 2:38:35 PM PDT by Leftism is Mentally Deranged
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To: Unam Sanctam
"Michael Pfleger, the Emimem of Black Liberation Theology" (on YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H11x6bMu4Y&eurl=http://www.d-videos.com/video/86227
11 posted on 06/26/2008 2:42:37 PM PDT by ETL
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To: popdonnelly
Why is it necessarily a bad thing for Trinity UCC to be criticized? Other people get criticism all the time.

From the website of UCC (United Church of Christ)
March 17, 2008:
"Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit."
http://www.ucc.org/news/responding-to-wright.html

From UCCTuths.com:
"No issue has bothered me more than the UCC's relationship with convicted [FALN] Puerto Rican terrorists that are responsible for over 150 bombings in the U.S. during the 70's and 80's. There is no moral or theological reason for defending members of this group who have killed and injured dozens of people. What is further shocking and completely contradictory to any of our beliefs is that there is no record (in the nearly 30 years that the UCC has been advocating for these terrorists) that our denomination ever reached out to the victims of FALN violence."
http://www.ucctruths.com/terrorist.html

From the American Spectator:
"Does the name Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional -- Armed Forces of National Liberation -- ring a bell? You may remember this charming group by its initials, FALN. A so-called revolutionary group determined to bring about Puerto Rican independence through violence. As reminded in a detailed February 12, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal by Debra Burlingame, it was FALN that was responsible for a New Year's Eve, 1982 bombing at One Police Plaza in New York. The explosion ripped the lower leg off of Police Officer Rocco Pascarella. ...

April 1998: [Janet] Reno's deputy attorney general Eric Holder meets with Paul Sherry, who is advocating clemency for FALN members. One wonders whether any responsibility for the loss of Officer Rocco Pascarella's leg, the blinding of Detective Senft's one eye, the shattering of his facial bones and the fracturing of his hip, as well as the complete blinding of Detective Pastorella and the loss of all the fingers of his right hand, was discussed. ...

Paul Sherry is actually the Reverend Paul Sherry, who, at the time he was meeting with the Deputy Attorney General of the United States to request clemency for the perpetrators of such horrific acts, was, I am sorry to say, the president of the United Church of Christ -- the denomination that Senator Obama and I share.

Reverend Sherry's request -- and he certainly was not alone -- was granted. As Ms. Burlingame and many others, notably the website UCC Truths, have noted, on August 11, 1999 clemency was indeed offered by President Clinton to the FALN terrorists. Twelve accepted in less than a month, and over the objections of then-Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, the terrorists were granted their freedom."
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12909

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760

12 posted on 06/26/2008 2:45:04 PM PDT by ETL
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To: Unam Sanctam
Obama's Preacher/Wife Problems Mean Nothing to Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas's Fanatical Cult and to Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas. The core/base of their pseudo Chrislim religion based on hating America and Whitey!

Behold the Evil Whitey!

Adios Trinity! I'm out of here for now!

This is my church, the one I never quit.


13 posted on 06/26/2008 4:13:10 PM PDT by Grampa Dave ( Kerry was a Uber Liberal, Hussein ObamaMessiaHamas makes Kerry look like Jesse Helms!)
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To: musicman

good one!


14 posted on 06/26/2008 5:22:39 PM PDT by patriot08
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To: patriot08

Thanks!


15 posted on 06/26/2008 5:52:08 PM PDT by musicman
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To: Grampa Dave

Those are GREAT!!


16 posted on 06/26/2008 5:52:47 PM PDT by musicman
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