You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

Barack Obama has left Trinity UCC. 'Twas clever of the Obama campaign to announce it on Florida-and-Michigan day, but I'm still a little sad. After the Philadelphia speech, I was hopeful that the Obama campaign had successfully seized upon the opportunity to have a conversation about Race In America that treated us like adults. But then Clinton went to the well in her interview with the Post-Gazette, George Stephanopolous and Charlie Gibson tag-teamed Obama on the subject, and then Father Pfleger had to go there, just as the nomination was winding down. So instead, the whole conversation is reduced to caricature.

I'll turn the mic over to Stephen, who probably has something more insightful to say.

Comments

[Alex]

Obama has said a couple times now he would have left the church if Wright wasn't retiring.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/20/lkl.01.html - March 20th (before Clinton gave that interview).

"It has enormous attendance with people from all walks of life. And so given that Reverend Wright was retiring, I have no reason to leave the church. And what I also have tried to point out is that had I known that many of these comments were being made, I would have confronted Reverend Wright directly. And if he had continued to argue these points or if I had heard them in the church, I might have left. But that is not what happened."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/28/obama.pastor/index.html - March 28th

"Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church," the senator said.

[yoyo]

Sounds like a bad idea. After spending months defending rev. wright and his church, he rejects them now? He looks really weak.

[Sir Charles]

yoyo,

I think he must feel like a) this church has gone out its way to burn him; b) that he can't tell what kind of batshit crazy thing will next be said from the pulpit; and c) he just cant'afford to deal with these distractions anymore.

I would suggest he look for the most boring, white bread main line protestant church in America.

Or, he could really let his freak flag fly and join those of us who are in post-religious mode.

[Corvus9]

Unitarian! Go Unitarian!

From what he has written about his mom I bet she would have loved the Unitarians.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

No Jesus -- no Jesus, no peace. From the crazies.

[Ari]

He looks really weak? To whom? Maybe to people who have paid attention to the ins and outs of the Wright story. But come November, he'll have the answer he needs for the debates. And that's the answer that the overwhelming majority of the electorate will hear. I'm not saying that's a wonderful thing; it's just politics.

[Ari]

Sorry, "come November" s/b "come fall."

[Corvus9]

Hey, there's kind of some Jesus...

[Joe Klein's conscience]

Sir Charles:
He could always go John Lennon on us!! ;-)

(It was him, and not Paul, that said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, right?)

[Sir Charles]

Indeed, Lennon did.

And I can see Michelle getting the Yoko Ono treatment from the press too.

[Corvus9]

Yes, because hard-working lawyers are so like free-spirited post-modern artistes.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus you know me without knowing me -- you should hear me screech to a random violin track while hurling paint randomly at a canvas after logging 8 or 9 billables for the day.