Radar

Sound and Fury
The Jeremiads of Jeremiah: Obama's Minister Speaks

obamajeremwright.jpg
Barack Obama has a problem, and his name is Jeremiah Wright. In the latest installment of Blame the Candidate for a Surrogate's Remarks (previous episodes include Samantha Power: Monster and Geraldine Ferraro: Racist), Obama's longtime reverend and his history of unseemly statements are causing some concern. Below, we've culled together Wright's most controversial quotes, and despite one obvious exception ("God Damn America"), they don't seem all that bad. Sure he can come across as harsh and blunt. Sometimes he can even seem anti-American, racist or anti-Semitic. But who doesn't have a crazy uncle or brother or preacher who says wacky shit everyone once in a while? Doesn't mean you agree with all the insane crap he says, just means he's a loony bastard and you love him in spite of it.

• "Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain't! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."
January 2008

• "Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person."
January 2008

• "When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."
January 2008

• "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run, Jesse Jackson, and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."
2006

• "In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns."
2005

• "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
2003

• "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
2001

• "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."
2001

• "The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."
Unknown

By Adam K. Raymond   03/14/08 2:30 PM
Related: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Sound and Fury
Send to a friend