Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been a thorn in presidential hopeful Barack Obama's side since his controversial comments from the pulpit emerged in March. Although Obama defended his pastor for some time, explaining that Wright's comments were being taken out of context, he has now altogether abandoned Wright. It started on Monday: After Reverend Wright made a statement at a National Press Club event that the United States could have planted the AIDS virus into black communities, Obama denounced the comments [1] as “divisive and destructive,” leading to division [2] within the black churchgoing community.
Obama's many blogging supporters are concerned about the issue. Cuban 26th parallel wants to know [3] what took Obama so long:
…one thing immediately came to mind:
Why didn't he do this earlier, like years ago?
We can only suspect, but it's a fairly safe bet that it was the following two things that set the official Obama/Wright separation in motion: 1) this time it was personal for Obama, and 2) His sweeping race speech in Philly (which understandably didn't do squat to answer any questions re Rev. Wright) didn't shut up the good reverend.
Mystical Politics also fears [4] that Obama's delay in denouncing Reverend Wright will affect his campaign:
My fear about Obama is that no matter what he says about Wright now – however harshly he denounces him – that this means the utter destruction of his campaign.
Some bloggers are less concerned with Wright's comments than the craziness of the media's response to them. A political glimpse from Ireland is one such blogger [5]:
I have to admit that I really was not too clued up on the Jeremiah Wright story and was one of those people who was subjugated to the never-ending bombardment of cut video clips. Yesterday’s Daily Show was great though because it affirmed the one thing that I had been thinking about all day and that is the Main Stream Media is really out of control. Instead of reporting on the issues yesterday, on every single news channel we had stories about Reverend Wright hurting Senator Obama. Now if you were the typical human being sitting at home and everytime you switched the channel and saw an isolated clip of Rev. Wright; it would be pretty easy for you to dismiss the man as a “nutter†as they say here in Ireland. This dismissal might also cause you to believe that Senator Obama is some sort of closet racist that was brain-washed by this man but this is far from the truth.
Australian Duckpond concurs [6]:
…As Paul Woodward says at The War in Context it is remarkable how little attention is actually paid to what Rev. Jeremiah Wright actually says at the National Press Conference in Washington or in pulpit. Everybody is supposed to be in awe of the way the right wing media circus will do with the latest opportunity. Snippets aplenty, and much like the Clinton campaign with motives as pure as snow their’s is not a racist campaign. But could any candidate run against the corporate media and win the election?
On the other side of things, blogger Darryl Wolk [7] announced Obama's comments toward Wright and received this comment from a reader:
I made a prediction today in my blog which confirms a prediction I made some time ago that indeed, Barack Obama will be the democratic nominee. I think his absolute denouncement of Rev. Wright which he made today definitely seals his nomination, which may have been a bit questionable even just a week ago, at least from my perspective and despite the high numbers obviously in his favor. McCain is my guy, and he's going to be a strong opponent to beat. If Barack would have entered the race leaving any doubts as to his feelings with regard to Rev. Wright, the highly publicized and controversial racist speech Wright made before his former church, and the cantankerous speech Wright made Monday at the National Press Club, Barack's campaign would have been finished. I think democrats might have looked to Hillary as their candidate if only because the Rev. Wright debacle would have proved distracting and frankly, would leave the democratic issues all but in the dust.
Barack still will not be president by my prediction, but he WILL be the democratic nominee for whatever its worth.