The Detroit chapter of the NAACP is featuring Barack Obama’s longtime minister, Jeremiah Wright, as keynote speaker at its annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner.
The event this Sunday is billed as the largest annual sit-down dinner of African Americans in the country. At least 10,000 people are expected to hear the Rev. Wright speak.
The question is, Why would anyone want to hear Wright make his trademark denunciations of America as an oppressor of blacks and a creator of the AIDS virus to kill them off?
“When you take the t-e-x-t out of context, you’re left with c-o-n, and we have been conned,” Detroit branch NAACP President Wendell Anthony explained as he announced the dinner’s speaker at a news conference.
Defenders of the Rev. Wright apparently think Americans are fools because they can’t be relied upon to understand what Wright is saying. When Wright shouts, “Goddamn America,” the context is clear as a bell.
Louis Farrakhan, who received a lifetime achievement award from Wright’s church in December and whom Wright praised for his “integrity and honesty,” uses the same bogus claim that his words are being quoted out of context as he makes hate-filled comments against America, whites, Jews, and homosexuals.
If this invitation from an organization dedicated to stamping out “racial hatred” is shocking, it is far less so than the fact that a man who has described Wright as a friend, mentor, and sounding board has a good shot at becoming president.
In the same vein as his association over two decades with Wright, Obama has had a “friendly” relationship with William Ayers, who has said he wishes he and the Weather Underground, of which he was a member, had done more than bomb the Pentagon, Capitol, State Department, and police stations.
“I don’t regret setting bombs," Ayers told The New York Times in a story that ironically ran on Sept. 11, 2001. “I feel we didn’t do enough.” For good measure, Ayers added that he would not discount the possibility he would do it again.
Defending his relationship with Ayers, which has included help when he first ran for the Illinois Senate, Obama said in the recent Democratic debate that he is also friendly with Rep. Tom Coburn. Obama described the Oklahoma Republican as favoring the death penalty for those who carry out abortions.
“Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements?” Obama asked. “Because certainly I don’t agree with those either.”
Radical as Coburn’s position may be, he was proposing legislation to be passed by Congress. That is quite different from Ayers’s admission that he bombed innocent people in violation of criminal law.
Instead of finding ways to excuse them, Obama should be denouncing both Wright and Ayers. Obama’s problem is that he does not know right from wrong.
Another New York Times Embarrassment
Breathlessly, The New York Times tried to suggest in a Page One story that there is something wrong with former military people appearing as analysts on television shows.
The story insinuated that because these analysts obtain information and guidance from the Pentagon and some of them have ties to defense contractors, their views are suspect. But reporters obtain information and guidance from the Pentagon all the time. It is called journalism.
Like any other guests on TV shows, analysts are expected to have ties to the people they discuss. Viewers understand that former military people can usually be expected to agree with Pentagon policies. Still, some of the analysts have expressed disagreement on the air.
The story was a continuation of the paper’s apparent effort to malign those who have risked their lives for their country. On Feb. 21, the paper ran a story suggesting that there was something wrong with John McCain’s relationship with a pretty female lobbyist, even though sex wasn't involved and the lobbyist obtained no favors.
On Jan. 13, the paper ran a story reporting on the number of murders allegedly committed by soldiers who return from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles,” the scary headline said.
The story never mentioned that the murder rate of the general population is five to six times higher than that of returning vets.
Andrew C. McCarthy Book Party
A regal cast turned out for a book party at the home of National Review Washington Editor Kate O’Beirne for federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy and his insightful book “Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad.”
No where will you see a better description of the attitude of many Americans towards the war on terror than in McCarthy’s Q&A with National Review Online Editor Kathryn Jean Lopez.
We are, McCarthy observed, “an odd combination of diffidence, self-loathing, and arrogance: doubtful we are worth the trouble to defend; apt to figure that if people hate us, we must deserve it; and sure that it is within our power to satisfy their grievances — even though we didn’t cause them — by dialogue, political processes, sensitivity-training, and, of course, buying them off, which simply confirms them in their suspicion that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.”
Among the guests at the party were Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General Bill Barr, Bill Kristol, and the entire National Review gang.
As Mukasey was chatting with a few people in a hallway, someone asked where O’Beirne was.
“She went to the left,” I said, pointing to the dining room.
“Kate O’Beirne would never go left,” Mukasey allowed.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
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