Jeremiah Wright Sinks Obama Campaign at National Press Club

No deep-pockets Hillary supporter or died-in-the-wool conservative blogger, pundit, editor or journalist working 7 days a week, 24 hours a day could do the kind of damage to Barack Obama's campaign that Jeremiah Wright unleashed during a one hour appearance before the National Press Club yesterday morning. Words fail to describe the stunning spectacle of calumny, and shtick that was put on full display before the national press corps between the hours of 9 and 10 AM Eastern Time Monday by the Junior Senator's Pastor and mentor of 20 years, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

While Barack Obama has been waging a relentless campaign to win the trust of blue collar and middle American voters in his bid to win the Indiana and North Carolina Primaries, Reverend Wright was able to shove the Presidential hopeful off stage and take the center spotlight at a critical juncture in Obama's effort to finish the 2008 race as his party's nominee. Following his disappointing 10 percentage point loss to former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Obama launched a new phase in his campaign in neighboring Indiana, forsaking the large rallies that exemplified his earlier appearances in favor of a blizzard of small townhall meetings and even capping a long day of glad handing in Kokomo with a televised 3 on 3 game of basketball. The last thing the Obama campaign PT boat expected today was to be sunk by the "friendly fire" blazing from the guns of the Battleship Jeremiah Wright. In scatter-shot fashion Reverend Wright launched self-congratulatory broadsides at various targets including Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Iraq War, Jews, America, critics of his sermons, the Marine Corps, and his former congregant turned Presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama.

During a much happier time in run for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination Senator Obama tried to dismiss the incendiary rantings of his cleric by telling reporters at the time that Reverend Wright, "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," and told a Jewish group that "everyone has someone like that in their family." Unfortunately for the Senator from Chicago's South Side, polite company is sitting in the parlor and the crazy old uncle has just taken off his clothes and is not going back into the attic.

Before a supportive group of listeners who have crowded in front of the dias Obama's Pastor is asked during a Q and A session to explain comments he made after 9/11 that "America's chickens are coming home to roost". Reverend Wright justifies his bombastic statements by repeatedly asking the questioner, "Have you heard the whole sermon?" The Reverend says he was quoting the ambassador from Iraq at the time who would have been a representative from Saddam Hussein's murderous regime. (What a source of moral authority!) Reverend Wright accuses the United States of carrying out acts of terrorism. The crowd gathered in the front of the auditorium is in full agreement with his anti-American quips.

During the segment while addressing questions about his association with Louis Farrakhan Reverend Wright said; "He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

Regarding Senator Obama Reverend Wright indicated that as a politician Obama will say whatever it takes to get elected and added regarding the Senator's distancing from his Pastor, "we both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said (in creating space between himself and Reverend Wright) he would never get elected." Later when asked if he thought America was damned Reverend Wright said, "as I told Obama last year, if you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you. Because you'd be representing a government whose policies grind under people."





In this segment Reverend Wright says the media was foolish to criticize him and his sermons and intones that these are not an attacks on him but an attacks on the black church and opines that if God wants Senator Obama to be President "no white racist....can get in the way". A not-so-subtle inference that a white person who does not support or vote for Obama is a racist.



After the smug performance his Pastor turned in before the nation's media Obama must be asking himself "with friends like this, who needs Hannity?"