At least part of "Pastorgate" exposed as BS! Wright's comments taken out of context

[Pushed To The Left]

He was quoting an ambassador he saw on television when he made those comments. FOX and Hannity should not be allowed to get away with this. Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ

[polichick]

1. That's what happens when people mistake FOX for real news.

[XemaSab]

2. Just watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw

[panader0]

4. CANT WATCH VIDEOS what is it about?

[XemaSab]

5. It's a sermon with pastor Wright

talking about the government's history of disenfranchising people that concludes with the words "God damn America" for treating brown/black/Asian/Native American people as second class citizens.

[thunder rising]

7. From the sermon you find that it is a contradiction of his theme. It is the theatrical statement

used to highlight the message, that contradicts the statement. However, since most Faux News people have 6 second attention spans and will take the phrase at face value, the issue is born. GOD DAMN FOX NEWS.

[femmedem]

8. Anderson Cooper gives you more of the text here:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-rev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/

Props to Anderson for this.

[Pushed To The Left]

6. Wow!! It definitely sounds different in context.

Hannity and FOX need to be held accountable for this. Has Media Matters gotten involved yet? This seems like the perfect job for them!

[RevCheesehead]

3. yet more proof that people never really listen to the pastor...

they just hear what they want to. O8)

[DemBones DemBones]

9. He was NOT quoting an ambassador when he said "God DAMN America"

and that's the sound bite that will lose the election for Obama.

[cottonseed]

10. Interesting thing about that

is that they strung it along with the 911 sermon, somehow implying that he was an unpatriotic america hating black. I've watched that one and the context there is a discussion of the government, how it's done people of all colors and countries wrong. It's not pretty, and people will of course need to make up there minds, but that's how I saw it.

Good luck using RW talking points tearing down the Dem nominee this year.

[RamboLiberal]

12. God Damn America I think was basically damning Repubs

way of treating America's problems. 3 strike laws and more prisons which imprison a disproportionate number of blacks.

Interestingly in this speech he talks about how governments change. Dred Scott to Emancipation Proclamation. Segregated armed forces to Truman desegregated (which was controversial at it's time). Segregation to the Civil Rights Act. And though he doesn't like Clinton's welfare to work he praises Clinton.

He was pointing out in historical context that great governments fail - Rome, British Empire, Germany, Japan and that the U.S. too may fail. Only God endures.

[Pushed To The Left]

13. See reply #2. He wasn't quoting the ambassador there, but it was still taken way out of context. n/t

[RamboLiberal]

11. Here's the Chickens Come Home to Roost Part

This is in middle of Wright's sermon where he is talking of what should our reaction (personal and our country) be to the attacks of 9-11. He was referencing psalm 137.

In its whole form, the psalm reflects the yearning for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City's enemies with sometimes violent imagery. Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah,and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: "For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity."

The early lines of the poem are very well known, as they describe the sadness of the Israelites, asked to "sing the Lord's song in a foreign land". This they refuse to do, leaving their harps hanging on trees. The poem then turns into self-exhortation to remember Jerusalem. It ends with violent fantasies of revenge, telling a "Daughter of Babylon" of the delight of "he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137

Rev Wright then calls below a footnote. He then relates how he was stuck in Newark in the days after the attack. How he had felt horror watching people jump out of buildings. That churches who were empty 51 weeks of the year were filled in mid-week with those of us searching for solace, for faith, for God's guidance. Then he tells his congregation what God told him, to look inside themselves.


“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”