My quotations of Obama’s words are in context as are my remarks. It is you refuse to look at the bigger picture and the implications.
I have resigned to the idea that Obama’s fans do their hardest to justify the man’s actions and split hairs, but I don’t buy it.

You believe that Obama should have remained, as he did, in a church that thrives on hatred, because to leave would have displayed a myopic vision?
It appears we have different understandings of “integrity” as well of other things.
It’s a no brainer that for much less whites have been escoriated. Obama himself, a year ago, when Imus made one offensive racial remark, called for him to be fired.
How hypocritical after he listened to Wright’s hateful messages for years and did nothing but come back. Talk is cheap. Let’s see him walk it.

When I wrote that Rev. Wright’s speeches made race central issue in this campaign, it was in response to RGDunn’s comment.
No one is denying that the issue of race is alive and well. However, it’s always framed as Whites on Blacks and ignored when it’s Blacks on Whites. Rev. Wright’s divisive speeches brought it into this campaign. Oh, I understand they wanted to keep it under cover until a more appropriate time, but then, Obama should have distanced himself from the man a long time ago, and they shouldn’t have been selling tapes of those sermons. Therefore, Obama has no one to blame but himself and his close friend and mentor.

The fact that some Whites and some Blacks believe the worst about our government and white people is not a justifiable reason for a preacher to stand up in church and inflame the congregation with lies and hatred. To use an old song, “Where is the Love?”

Do you believe AlQaeda terrorists are equal to our troops?
Our government created the HIV epidemic?
All the problem in this country are caused by Whites?

I see no difference between this reverend and Black Panthers. However, he is using his pulpit for all the wrong reasons.

So everyone should know that the “audacity of hope” stems not from love and faith, but resentment and hatred, which (yes, Obama) if left unchecked leads to massive distortions in reality — like the U.S. gov’t created Aids to kill blacks and the Jews are conspiring against us with their mounds of gold in the basement of Temple.

The distortion in reality comes from being UNCHECKED. Never having one of the parishioners, particularly the Harvard educated ones, stand up after Church and say…”If your goal is to make life better for our community, you are on the WRONG track.”

Obama let down his own community by not stopping this hater. If fact, inaction is tactic agreement and support. And what should WHITES do the next time they hear another WHITE use the N-word — According to BHO: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! And that’s change how….

I’ll try to address what you said, and help you see what these good folk have been trying to patiently explain to you:

Firstly, your partial Obama quote:
“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”You left out the balance of the segment: . Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.And please, don’t respond to that with another simplistic view that he should have walked out back then. To do so would have shown a myopic vision that is not within him. He discusses this further: Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. Would you want a man of integrity, or a politician who only looks to see ‘how things will look in the press’, hmm?
Obama, unlike his campaign’s slogans is just another politician. Perhaps, a little better than Bill Clinton, but just the same.Okay, that’s not only offensive, but SO VERY wrong. Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the U.S. lately? The whole Chapter on Clinton? His aide in converting FEMA to a military organization; His acts of war and disgrace in the Sudan, in Rwanda, in Somalia; his involvement in Iraq in the FIRST PLACE. Depleted Uranium Rounds, starving Iraqi children – all acceptable to Bill. And apparently, as she never spoke out against these acts – too busy collecting money from medical corporate giants I suppose – Hillary is as guilty as her husband.Shame on you for comparing these men.
Rev. Wright and his beliefs have made race the central issue of this campaign.
Absurd! Matters of Race are far from being quiet, or settled, or even properly addressed in this country. I mean, what about the dang Natives of this country – on their second longest walk in history across the country. Would they need to do this if the racial divide was stemming from 1 black minister? Or the black church? No. overt racism and it’s long-lasting demoralizing affects have come, my dear, from whites – from Columbus the murderer down to the present. Get real. The good Reverend has spoken words that many people, black and white, happen to believe, for your information. They are part of our country’s heritage, and it’s reality today. Healing begins by someone, ANYone, actually addressing these issues, painful as it is.

Rev. Wright and his beliefs have made race the central issue of this campaign.

Avinash ~
you like others play with words to fit your ideas.

Making this eleciton campaign for Obama about race is wrong and is harmful. Just let it go. Let the healing happen. Let the race go back to substance and get out of the gutter. To react to this past but makes it our future. In other words, grow up, everyone.

Check the youtube of Obama, he says he never heard the comments that were the cause of the current controvery, the comments being rplayed on the news, you are distorting the facts

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_7piGy0u43c

Obama, unlike his campaign’s slogans is just another politician. Perhaps, a little better than Bill Clinton, but just the same.
Many yesterday saw through the double-talk and the lies. His speech raised more questions than it answered.

Obama verbatem:
“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

Fact ~ Obama denied being present when ANY controversial statement was made.

Fact ~ Yesterday, he negated that initial stance.

Seems like you want to quibble on words and meanings and re-interpret what he said.

The defense Obama initially gave was that he wasn’t there during the controversial statements. OK, fine, so that explains why he didn’t stand up and walk out, or take any other action to express his disapproval of those particular statements.

Yet now he admits that he WAS there during other controversial statements. So, he didn’t walk out on those…why? He never really explains that, other than to list all of the other good qualities that Rev. Wright has, and why he liked this particular church. Yet he won’t admit that it was wrong for him to give tacit approval to the incendiary statements that he DID sit through silently, even though you are correct to note that this doesn’t disprove his lawyerly defense of not speaking out against the particular ones that have made their way to YouTube.

I don’t know if anyone brough up the subject that while Obama’s speech awed his supporters it also revealed Obama did lie about never sitting in the pews during some of those statements.

Actually, you’re completely wrong about that. What Obama said first of all is that he wasn’t in the pews for the now famous youtube screed sermons. Then in his subsequent speech, he said that on occasion he has witnessed Wright say ugly things he didn’t agree with.

There’s no contradiction there. No one has shown that Obama witnessed the youtube screeds.

I have not caught up with previous threads so, I don’t know if anyone brough up the subject that while Obama’s speech awed his supporters it also revealed Obama did lie about never sitting in the pews during some of those statements.

Also, was all that demonization of Republicans toward the end of his speech meant to “unite” us or divide us even further?

It’s not the Republicans, or Fox that brought the race issue out in the open. It was his pastor, mentor and friend.
Let’s not forget that many blacks have denounced Rev. Wright’s accusations and like many of us would never attend, support or share Rev. Wright’s opinions.

That many liberals want to give a pass to Obama et al shows the double standard we have come to know so well. A Republican in a less controversial situation would have already quit the race amidst liberals outrage.

Incidentally, if Obama want to be excused for being out of touch with reality when it comes to his close friend, HOW in the world can we expect him to be clued to bigger issues as CiC?

You guys, can’t have it both ways.
“He’s honest but he lies. He’s unaware but he’s smart.”

This situation is very similar to Ron Paul racists letters. Actually, RP’s pretension of ignorance, looks at this juncture more credible than Obama’s initial claim to ignorance. Those of you who casted RP’s followers as blindly adhering to the man, are doing the same thing with Obama.

I understand, he is your only “hope,” but by defending the indefensible your own disingenuousness shows.