Lynn Sweet brings us up to speed:
The Clinton campaign at first had no comment, then Thursday evening said Obama did not go far enough in distancing himself from Pfleger. “Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together and have no place at the pulpit or in our politics,” said a statement issued by Clinton spokesman Phil Singer. “We are disappointed that Senator Obama didn’t specifically reject Father Pfleger’s despicable comments about Senator Clinton, and assume he will do so.”
Chicago Sun-Times religion reporter Mike Thomas asked Cardinal Francis George’s office for a reaction, and his spokeswoman, Colleen Dolan said, ”The cardinal has made it clear to Father Pfleger in the past on more than one occasion that it’s inappropriate to speak about political issues from the pulpit and that his own personal opinions are his own personal opinions.”
The campaign of presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain declined comment.
Pfleger is a longtime Obama friend and was in the audience at the National Press Club for that Wright press conference, and when we talked afterward, he realized Wright created a problem for Obama.
I was told Pfleger’s comments stunned some in the Obama camp because they expected him to be more politically savvy — and not take on Clinton,especially at Trinity, of all places.
The whole business is awe-inspiring on a number of levels. First, because Clinton’s latched onto it and McCain’s been smart enough to leave it alone, though of course Teh Wingnuts will be blamed for mountainizing this molehill. Second, because in the wake of his repudiation by Obama Reverend Moonbat has counter-repudiated his one-time “protege.” Third, because of the commenters here who believe they see bias in my responses to clergy stupidity when it clearly violates Church policy–not to mention anti-campaigning restraints placed on clergy generally by civil law.
But the most awesome part of all is the way that these morons continue to compound their deep moronicity in the public eye. That’s entertainment.
A MP3 sound file from last year where Pfleger calls for a gun shop owner to be snuffed out like a rat:
http://isra.org/quick/pfleger_calls_for_murder_052607.mp3
“Moronicity” Haha, that’s brilliant. Wasn’t that an album by the Police c. 1983? I don’t know what’s funnier, the endless cavalcade of caricatures even John Waters couldn’t invent or the attempts of the Obama apologists to rationalize their words using bastardized pseudo-intellectual sounding excuses for them. Eh…screw it. You’re a racist.
We are screwits . . . in the ethereal world.
Hypocrisy is the religion of politics.
And the dollar is it’s prophet.
Identify whatever problems you wish; they are many.
The one problem for Obama that REALLY ought to get some mileage is that Obama, both in the Illinois senate and as a U.S. Senator, saw tax dollars (not his own money but the money of others) steered toward ministries controlled by this crackpot. Obama knows darn well what this guy is all about. I don’t care what good works this guy may or may not do. I suspect that there are plenty of deserving organizations in inner-city Chicago that aren’t engaging in this kind of hateful racism.
When is the U.S. Treasury department going to yank the tax-exempt status of churches where these guys advocate for and against specific candidates? The minute the churches of these pastors are paying income tax on their contributions received at corporate income tax rates, they’ll stop this nonsense immediately. Tax-exempt status is not a right; it’s a privilege granted to these entities.
Obama’s entire lawn is molehills.
The vocal stylings of Pfleger.
Like a game of whack-a-mole without a hammer
St. Sabina
SAM, it will never happen. How many times has this issue been brought up with the non-profit organizations of both Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson? They’ll use the “R-word” , and the government will shrivel like a set of testicles in the Hudson River.
I gave it some thought and I’m gonna keep my 401k I think. Baracky may think that’s racist and all but for real I think getting rid of it would be a bad choice, and I will tell you why. That money that’s in that account is actually deferred wages, meaning it’s money that was paid to me for doing things for these people I work for. If I got rid of it I think it would be like giving myself a for real pay cut. Baracky will have to explain more better how that would be a good choice. But if any of you are oppressed by that, I’m sorry.
Does anybody else read this as a new revelation for Obama?
Yeah, but where does this leave his notion of “Change” or “Hope” ?
The folks at Trinity UCC are caught up in a “time warp’ that leaves their America stuck some time around 1960. The “fellowship” with Louis Farrakhan and his clan seem to back up this idea, as much of Islam is stuck in the 6th century, making Trinity look like positively modern.
Radicals like Father Pfleger and Ayers must find the 60’s atmosphere at Trinity like reliving the glory days of the “Summer of Love.” I bet if they could unearth the bones of LBJ it would make the day complete.
Meanwhile, Obama finally catches up on the developments of the last 45 years and gleans the idea, that has been obvious to those of us that actually lived during the past 45 years, that there has been “Hope” and “Change” that seems to have gone unreported in his universe.
Which brings us back to .. where does this leave his notion of “Change” or “Hope” ?
Well . . . I don’t know about that.
But the most awesome part of all is the way that these morons continue to compound their deep moronicity in the public eye. That’s entertainment.
Yes, that is the most peculiar part of this. For people who are supposedly intelligent and who want to gtet a candidate elected, they seem to do the things that are going to hurt that candidate the most. The lack of forethought is alarming (but not actually surprising in people who do not make it a point to think so much as to feel).
DISTRACTION!!!
Maybe he’s hoping to change Happyfeet’s mind. And checking account routing numbers.
Sean M. :
I thought that looked like Rick Astley in the pulpit there. 4chan got me again.
Phlegm
They honestly don’t expect it to be noticed, or to be an issue. After all, they’ve said and done the same things for decades and nobody made a fuss over it.
Very mean spirited, Karl! You have become what you criticize!
– or –
What about Hagee?
Yeah, Karl. Meanie.
And this does nothing to help Michelle keep fresh fruit in the house for their kids.
Then it’s not smart, is it? If you’re getting the chair no matter what you do, shoot up the fucking courtroom.
But that doesn’t apply, does it?
If doing otherwise will associate him, in his own mind, with Teh Wingnuts, McCain will always “leave it alone.” I’d be surprised if the mascara-running yellow-backdrop McCain-tranny LEAVE BARRY ALONE111eleventy!!! video isn’t in production already, because at some point during this campaign, McCain will step between Teh Wingnuts’ bullets and his Esteemed Colleague…again. And again. And again. And in the general, it’ll really piss you off.
Do you h8rs know how much it costs to keep arugula-crunching preachers like Father Pfleger ranting away at Whitey?
Guys, you need a better grade of troll here. The quality over the last year has undergone a significant degradation.
Maybe that’s just another sign of the abysmal education system in this country, that it cannot even produce a quality troll?
I just heard a bit on the news about Obama’s organizers for a rally (somewhere) setting up the porta-potties on the site of a memorial to fallen police officers… good lord, who ARE these people???
Race-baiting….it IS what Democrats do best.
And these rats (Powers, Pfleger, Wright, etc.) are coming out of the woodwork because they think the USA will now accept their racist and bigoted worldview.
I have a feeling Baracky’s campaign people wouldn’t mind a Rickroll right about now. It’d be the least cruel thing to happen to them on Youtube in a while.
Iconoclast, I wondered the same thing myself. I believe some of Hillary’s feminist followers think the same thing. I don’t think they realize that America doesn’t care for reactionaries or radicals; either extreme is too devisive. We’re not perfect, but we’re usually reasonable. Individual events may swing the pendulum left or right for a time, but we seem to settle in the middle.
Kampaign Klinton depicts Pfleger as divisive and hateful, yet all Pfleger is doing is working within the framework of identity politics as established by the left. By all means, let the honest conversation about race in Amerikkka continue.
The Righteous Reverand Pfleger on reparations:
O?
I wonder if Rev. Pfleger thinks O! deserves reparations, given that his ancestors never felt the sting of slavery. I also wonder if he thinks I should pay said reparations, given that my ancestors weren’t even in America during slavery.
Please, Jeffersonian, you think we can tell the difference? they all look alike.
Reparations my ass. If it hadn’t been for slavery, most of the “perpetual victims” would be lying dead in the blood-filled streets of that most-hopeless of all hopeless causes known as Africa.
retro – Those court rulings had to smart a bit, no?
Why do they keep embarrassing Obama? Because they’ve been doing this schtick for so long, they can’t tell that the rest of us have moved on.
It’s like your crazy uncle who is not yet hip to the fact that it’s “Asian-American” instead of “chinaman” and “Native American” instead of “injun.”
Furthermore, in academic circles, talk about reparations and white guilt and enjoying the benefits of your ancestors’ perfidy is de rigeur. They haven’t moved on, either, and in fact are loath to give up the head-rush that their revolutionary antics in the late 1960s gave them.
Hence the Womyn’s Studies programs and other nonsense.
You get a reduced rate since you’re enjoying the fruits of other’s descendants. But you’re here now, so PAY UP!
The line forms behind me, I guess.
Oops, my bad. Does O!’s granny get a discount, seeing as she’s already spent a fortune on O! hisself?
Neither were mine, but it matters not. Once they became citizens they were “stained with the original sin of slavery” just like every other American the taint of the very stained Constitution.
A passage from a sermon by Wright or Pfleger? Nope. Obama’s “greatest speach on race evah!” at The Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
/-O- (noes)
BJ – You owe double, no, triple because you sold out and oppress your own people. You are a bad bad man.
On behalf of the great State of Minnesota, I offer our reparations in the form of the battle flag of the 28th Virginia, which our boys took at Pickett’s charge. It’s worth a bunch of money, and we’re getting tired of Virginia asking to have it back.
Honestly, can somebody spell out for me just how many cotton plantations there were in south Chicago?
Baracky’s ancestors on his mother’s side were wielding the whip. Mine, OTOH, were of the sort that people would hire to do things they didn’t want their slaves doing because you didn’t lose your investment when a Mick got killed, you just hired another one. The way I see it, Baracky owes me.
I’d say that Pflegler is the first smart thing O has done is a long good while. A truly forgettable useful idiot in ordinary times, he brings up all the hot, sweaty topics that give progressives wood–reparations, radical egalitarianism, racist conspiracies– without O! having to do so, and thus risk electoral defeat. As such, Pflegler is a fantastic dog-whistle, keeping the progs (who are going to be needed in record numbers) on the reservation. They’ve been waiting a while for the inevitable kick in the nuts. Most progs know full well how marginalized they are, and like a dog or abused lover, anticipate abuse.
If people knew what an absolute leftie O! was, they’d plotz.
Jeffersonian @ #34: Where have you been? As per Ward Churchill you can self identify with the identity of your own choosing. Choose wisely and you too can profit from identity politics.
I wonder if this guy ever got his $20,000?
Jeff may have to bring in Ward and Billy to work out the fine details.
dicentra at # 38.
Absolutely true.
They just can’t switch the gears while driving at 100 miles an hour.
I think Obama has to denounce the whole frigging church filled with parishioners who still feel they are under unbearable racist oppression….
Question for all:
what is the pithiest, simplest and most convincing way to state objections to Obama in such a way as to (1) convince the independent/apathetic listener I am not a nut, and (2) sow real doubt in same listener’s mind.
I tend to like that something along the lines of:
“Obama? Great that a black man is getting a real shot at the presidency, of course. I just don’t know about him, so I can’t tell if he is the right guy for the job. Not much background in Senate, much more convinced in the ability of Government to direct and control our lives than I like, and seems to have a lot of very odd friends & mentors.”
How’s that?
iconoclast – I prefer calling him Baracky, the one that wields the empty suit of mirrors.
How about “he’s critically unqualified, running on sophistry without substance, and the few ideas that you can pin him down on are old, discredited, and failed policies of the Carter era.”
Not much background in Senate, much more convinced in the ability of Government to direct and control our lives than I like, and seems to have a lot of
very oddcompletely rabid whackadoodle friends & mentors.There.
Question his blackness?
“what is the pithiest, simplest and most convincing way to state objections to Obama”
I’m interested in this Obama guy, what do you know about his actual accomplishments?
Obama has spent big part of his adult life immersed
in a culture that at its core believes whites don’t deserve their generally (on average) higher social status and that blacks should be granted all kinds and manner of affirmative action style accommodations
I don’t think the vast majority of Americans agrees with that concept. If he doesn’t soon make a clean break from that “Church” he ain’t gonna win the election .
I’m interested in this Obama guy, what do you know about his actual accomplishments?
I like it. Very devious. And when the respondent says “not very much”, the response is “yeah, that is what concerns me too”.
How about “he’s critically unqualified, running on sophistry without substance, and the few ideas that you can pin him down on are old, discredited, and failed policies of the Carter era.â€Â
while very true, comes too close to the edge in sounding very partisan, at least for this purpose. The trick is to not let the other person know that you are very well informed and feel strongly about this doofus and his “completely whackadoodle friends and mentors”, not to mention his insane economic policies and a foreign policy that can only be kindly described as the second coming of Jimmuh. I am trying to sow doubt, not bludgeon someone into superficially agreeing with me in order to get me to STFU.
The sermons at Obama’s church will not change just because one of their own is going for Whitey’s House.
They show up at UCC in order to celebrate their victimhood. And they show up to be entertained.
They are incapable of being racists because there’s no such animal as a black – skinned racist.
They. Don’t. Exist. Because that’s the white folks’ gig. Dig?
Look at it this way: Imagine if on some random Monday, the NBA published a statement that NOBODY gets more than two steps and that they made it stick. By Saturday the TV networks would be using technical magic to cover the booming echoes and empty seats in the arenas.
Why go to church and talk about God’s love and the supplicant’s responsibilities when your entire past experience has been more akin to a two-hour hate, with tunes?
Back in ’92 I was fairly certain that we’d not see the Horndog from Hope anywhere near the Whitehouse; we knew he was damaged goods and an ethical trainwreck long before the general. Here in 2008, I got nothin’ for predictions.
Americans. They thirst for death! (with apologies to Gerard).
Rob at #21:
They honestly don’t expect it to be noticed, or to be an issue. After all, they’ve said and done the same things for decades and nobody made a fuss over it.
I think you are right – they have never been forced to be circumspect because their bigotry was going against the correct group, whites. They’ve had a pass for that for so long they don’t know what to do when challenged and are surprised when someone tasks them seriously about their hate and bigotry.
“What do you mean you aren’t laughing? What do you mean you find this reprehensible? I’m only attacking the oppressors!”
#48 – How about this?
Barack Obama wants to be president of the United States, but many of his close friends and personal, spiritual advisors hate most of the people who live in the United States. Kind of odd, isn’t it? Why would a man want to lead a country when his closest advisors and mentors publicly state their hate for that country and the bulk of its citizens? Why would you want to elect that man president?
â€ÂThe cardinal has made it clear to Father Pfleger in the past on more than one occasion that it’s inappropriate to speak about political issues from the pulpit and that his own personal opinions are his own personal opinions.â€Â
…which is why we invited him to speak at TUCC
Comment by iconoclast on 5/30 @ 2:16 pm #
Question for all:
what is the pithiest, simplest and most convincing way to state objections to Obama in such a way as to (1) convince the independent/apathetic listener I am not a nut, and (2) sow real doubt in same listener’s mind.
I tend to like that something along the lines of:
“Obama? Great that a black man is getting a real shot at the presidency, of course. I just don’t know about him, so I can’t tell if he is the right guy for the job. Not much background in Senate, much more convinced in the ability of Government to direct and control our lives than I like, and seems to have a lot of very odd friends & mentors.â€Â
How’s that?
Obama shouldn’t have spent so much time writing books. Flashcards are a better way to connect to your type of audience.