Daily Blog Buzz: “The Audacity of Oops”

Bloggers are still buzzing about Obama’s pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his controversial, America-hating sermons. On Friday, Wright left his post on Obama’s campaign, and Obama has since denounced the most offensive sermon in a Huffington Post op-ed and claimed he was not aware of Wright’s anti-America rhetoric. The Chicago Sun-Times‘s Lynn Sweet reports that at a campaign event on Sunday, “Obama sought to portray Wright as more than a polarizing figure–someone who bears the scares of racism–while conceding that ‘if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked.'” Even if Obama wasn’t present at that specific sermon, bloggers think it’s impossible that Obama wasn’t aware of Wright’s views. In fact, he was aware, as both Ben Smith and Rich Lowry recall a passage in Obama’s memoir Dreams of My Father that quotes a Wright sermon about “white folks’ greed.” Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades reminds us of Obama’s close relationship with Wright. And according to Byron York at the Corner, the campaign knew that Wright was trouble. Contentions’ Jennifer Rubin asks, “Was Obama really clueless about the septic nature of the man he knew, his mentor, for thirty years? (If so, you have to wonder about those touted people skills.)” Good Lt. at the Jawa Report chimes in: “Hey! Obama’s just been extended family to this guy for 20 years and has tithed tens of thousands of dollars to this church. How can you expect him to know what the preacher actually preached in the sermons every week?” Allahpundit wonders what Obama will do now: “If the media starts going through old sermons week by week, with new and ever more nuanced conspiracy theories emerging periodically, is he going to roll out weekly statements to the effect of, ‘Nope, never personally heard him say that, or that, or that either’?” As Sweetness & Light and Hot Air point out, it seems the official Obama website’s “Faith Testimonials” page has been scrubbed of Jeremiah Wright. A good move–but bloggers find it laughable. Don Surber calls it “the Audacity of Oops”: “His church condemns those who ‘smear’ Rev. Wright, while Obama erases the good reverend from his Web site. Whither Oprah?” And Allah says, “In Obama’s defense, he had no reason to delete it earlier; after all,
he
you only found out about Wright’s hate sermons this week.” Here, Dean Barnett noted: “There is some good news for Obama. America will indeed judge him on his values and judgment. But there’s bad news, too: To get a picture of his values and his judgment, voters will need to look at his personal life…And the inferences one can make regarding Obama’s ‘values’ from his relationship with Reverend Wright are a lot more likely to move voters away from Obama rather than towards him.” It’s just too bad that this didn’t happen after Obama secured the nomination.