Opinion: Barack Obama responds to latest Jeremiah Wright remarks
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WILMINGTON, N.C. -- The hot-talking Rev. Jeremiah Wright was back in the news today, speaking to a jammed National Press Club and giving no ground in the controversy over his taped sermons.
So, naturally, his most famous parishioner, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, was asked about it while he was campaigning in North Carolina Monday for the Tar Heel State’s May 6 Democratic presidential primary. And Obama, in turn, asked voters to judge him by his own words and deeds rather than his past associations.
His controversial former spiritual mentor reemerged in the presidential campaign through a broadcast interview and a series of speeches over the weekend and today.
‘I think people will understand that I am not perfect,’ Obama said, ‘and that there are going to be folks in my past like Rev. Wright that may cause them some concern.’
‘But that ultimately my 20 years of service and the values that I’ve written about and spoken about and promoted are their values and what they’re concerned about,’ Obama added.
The Illinois senator spoke at a press conference (hastily arranged by campaign staffers after Wright’s latest remarks) on the airport tarmac in Wilmington, N.C., as media traveling with him were about to board his campaign plane. Airplane engines roared in the background and a plane taking off interrupted the brief media availability, which lasted less than six minutes and permitted only three questions.
Obama sought anew to distance himself from Wright’s incendiary remarks after the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ spoke Monday in Washington. Wright delivered a high-profile speech the night before at a NAACP dinner in Detroit and also appeared on a PBS program hosted by Bill Moyers for a lengthy interview in which he said he was hurt by the reaction to his inflammatory sermons.
‘Some of the comments that Rev. Wright has made offend me, and I understand why they offend the American people,’ Obama said. ‘He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign.’
‘Many of the statements that he’s made, both that triggered this initial controversy and that he’s made over the last several days, are not statements that I have heard him make previously,’ the senator added. ‘They don’t represent my views.’
--Mike Dorning
Mike Dorning writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau. Photo Credit: Trinity United Church of Christ