The “Wonderful Young Pastor” Otis Moss

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Barack Obama, from his March 2008 Philadelphia speech on race:

“I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.”

Barack Obama’s JUDGMENT was that Jeremiah Wright was his “close spiritual adviser” for 20 years until the media bought the CDs of Wright’s sermons, for sale publicly, and simply played excerpts from the sermons that Wright himself and his church had CHOSEN for inclusion on those for-profit CDs.

Barack Obama’s JUDGMENT is that the character and abilities of the new pastor Otis Moss are such that he will continue to be a member of Trinity. Well, that’ll last until the media more widely plays the videos of THOSE sermons — and quite possibly more videos we haven’t seen yet — and then undoubtedly Obama will do another fast backtrack.

Larry Johnson had a great conversation with his own former pastor of many years recently, and wrote about the talk in his story here, “What Would Tip O’Neill Do About Barack’s Pastors?” That retired pastor told Larry a story about a truly WISE politician, who KNEW what to do:

Too bad Tip O’Neill is dead, because Barack Obama could benefit from his wisdom. I had a conversation last night with my pastor, a man named Calvin. He is like Jeremiah Wright in only one aspect–he has retired from his official duties. Unlike Wright, I have never heard a hateful, vile, or racist rant from him and he continues working to touch the lives of people.

As we discussed the Wright rant, my former pastor recounted the words of Tip O’Neill, the former Speaker of the House, as they played golf twenty years ago. The subject was the role of pastors in speaking out on hot political topics. Tip told Cal:

Politicians need to learn an important skill. If you are hearing things that go against your values you get up and walk out.

The common sense of Tip O’Neill is sorely lacking in the life and campaign of Barack Obama. Most Americans have already seen clips of Wright’s racist and hateful rants. But he’s not the only religious adviser close to Barack with a knack for intemperate comments. Consider the following gentlemen.

“If you are hearing things that go against your values you get up and walk out.”

Can it get any simpler than that?

Obama can hold a press conference every day from now until June, and it won’t erase the KNOWLEDGE that people NOW have about him: That he sat in those pews for 20 years and heard the same narcassistic, hate-filled, anti-American “bull” from Jeremiah Wright that we were all subjected to on our television sets from Friday through Monday morning.

In “When it suits his all-consuming political ambitions, at the time …,” I wrote:

[W]hen it suited his political “aspirations” in 2004 during his U.S. Senate run — Obama couldn’t get close enough to Rev. Wright and his church. From the Chicago Sun-Times, April 5, 2004:

These days, he says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity in the Brainerd neighborhood every week — or at least as many weeks as he is able. His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant.

Obama can’t unring this bell.

Obama can’t deny knowing that his own church sold the now-infamous Wright sermons on CDs to make money.

Obama can’t deny having seen and/or read the church’s bulletins, full of anti-American writings.

Obama can’t deny having been married by Wright or having his two beautiful little girls baptized by Wright.

Obama can’t deny who he is: An opportunistic politician who can’t get close enough to someone like Wright when it helps, and who can’t run fast enough when it most certainly doesn’t help.

And Obama can’t lessen Wright’s impact by pointing to that “wonderful” new pastor because — thank god — we have tapes these days. We have YouTube these days. And we can see that that “wonderful” new pastor, Otis Moss, is preaching the same divisive, racist rhetoric that Wright did.

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Afterthought: It is heartening that few of America’s predominantly black churches preach racist hate and separatism, according to NPR’s Juan Williams.

It is therefore all the more disturbing that Obama chose one of the small minority of churches that used hate, distrust of whites, and anti-Americanism to rev up its parishioners.

Obama probably wouldn’t have gotten the visibility — and the aid to his all-consuming political ambition — had he attended one of the more progressive, and probably smaller and less influential, black churches. But he would have been able, during this presidential race, to present himself as someone who, as Tip O’Neill did, got up and walked out, and instead sought a more mentally healthy atmosphere in which to worship.

It is, however, very worrisome to me that such churches exist and make boatloads of money from selling such hate. Their more impressionable parishioners can be forever affected, scarred, and wrongly influenced by such racist speech.

But this is a free country. No matter what Jeremiah Wright — and many of his parishioners, including ____ ? — may think of it. And they are free to preach their hate speech.

Maybe it’s not such a bad country after all.