With the recent revelation of horribly offensive, racist and anti-American sermons by Barack Obama’s pastor, the natural question is how much will this hurt the Obama campaign? The statements by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright are seen as beyond offensive by the vast majority of Americans and made worse by the fact that they are preserved on video. As a result, Senator Obama has been distancing himself from his pastor as rapidly as possible.
The Senator claims that with one or two minor exceptions, “None of these statements were ones I had heard myself personally in the pews.” That is a politically defensible position …as far as it goes.
His greater problem is that by saying he was unaware of those specific statements, Senator Obama is implying that he was unaware that the man he has claimed as his spiritual guide was a rabid anti-American racist.
Senator Obama has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years. Rev. Wright married him, baptized his children, has been “like an uncle” and yet Senator Obama had absolutely no idea that the man harbored any of these horribly offensive views?
Is that plausible?
Even if Senator Obama was absent from church every time Rev. Wright gave one of his racist, anti-American or anti-semitic sermons, we are being asked to believe that in the course of 20 years, no other member of the church ever mentioned them, and Rev. Wright never gave the slightest hint that he held these obscene views, even though he was, in Obama’s words “like a member of the family.”
Our common sense understanding of human nature tells us that this is not true. Whether Senator Obama heard the specific comments in question or not, he knew this man and he knew, at least in general terms, what he believed and still chose to claim him as his mentor.
No one should be held to account for the words or views of another. But whom we choose to proclaim as our moral guide, does give insight into our character. In Senator Obama’s case, that insight is of a man who is not instinctively repelled by that which America finds vile.
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