Obama's Jeremiah Wright Problem

I was shocked to see Barack Obama say that he had no idea about his 20 year pastor's bigoted and foolish remarks from the pulpit. Mr. Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, isn't he? And he attended Trinity for 20 years listening to Pastor Wright.

Until the couple of days Pastor Wright was a campaign endorser and was featured prominently on the Obama campaign web site. The truth is that Mr. Obama knew about Pastor Wright's controversial preaching. Because of the controversial church positions, the Obama campaign disinvited Pastor Wright from giving the invocation at Mr. Obama's announcement of his intention to run as reported in the New York Times on March 5, 2007.

I have long been concerned about the message of Mr. Obama's home church, the Trinity United Church of Christ.

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.

I understand that to be saying that whites are not welcome. If Mr. Obama gets the nomination and wins the election, Mr. Obama needs to be the president of all Americans. This does not seem to me to be a good sign that he would be.

Mr. Obama's claims of ignorance about Pastor Wright's hateful sermons do not bode well for either Mr. Obama's intelligence or his honesty: one or the other is deficient.