From Justin Quinn,
Your Guide to US Conservative Politics.
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On Tuesday, in what appeared to be a move born of political desperation, Barack Obama held a press conference in which he addressed the most recent remarks of his long time pastor and friend, the man who he had repeatedly said brought him to Christ.

Although it is widely being reported that Obama denounced Reverend Wright, in truth, it is Wright’s comments that he denounced. All that this means is that Obama rejected Wright’s views. Yet there is all the difference in the world between rejecting a person’s positions and rejecting the person to whom those positions belong. We reject, indeed, denounce, the perspectives of those with whom we profoundly disagree —- this is, after all, what it means to profoundly disagree —- all of the time; we do not, however, for this reason, necessarily reject the people whose views we reject. That these conflicts in which we routinely find ourselves more frequently than not involve friends, spouses, and relatives is all the evidence needed to show that this distinction is fundamental.

Unfortunately, it seems to be lost on all too many in the media, both “mainstream” and “conservative.”

Obama no more denounced Reverend Wright by denouncing his comments than he denounced his white grandmother by denouncing her remarks regarding her fear of strange black men. For that matter, and for the record, neither did Obama denounce Louis Farrakhan when the latter endorsed him. Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s persistence, Obama, after denying that there was a distinction between “rejecting” and “denouncing,” accommodated Clinton by “denouncing” Farrakhan’s “anti-semitic” statements (as if these were the only statements made by this black supremacist that warrant denunciation): he never denounced Farrakhan. That is, he never rejected his endorsement.

In his “A More Perfect Union” speech, Obama denounced the comments that Wright had made during his tenure as Obama’s pastor. Obama reminded the press on Tuesday that he had done this.

“Now, I’ve already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons,” he said. “And I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. He has built a wonderful congregation. The people of Trinity are wonderful people, and what attracted me has always been their ministries’ reach beyond the church walls.”

There are two observations that must be made here. First, there is no difference between Obama’s speech Tuesday and his speech in Philadelphia. On both occasions, he denounces Wright’s comments. Second, there is no difference between Obama’s speech in Philadelphia and his speech Tuesday. On both occasions, he acknowledges the enormous good that he says Wright has achieved in Chicago. But supposedly, the most recent speech is different from the one he gave in Philadelphia.

So what is the alleged difference?

This is how Obama explains it: “But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses” (emphasis mine).

This is so transparently disingenuous that it stretches credibility to the snapping point. Obama makes it sound as if Wright is saying all of these things for the very first time, as if his remarks have just now crossed a line. But this is what Wright has been saying for years, and just last year he gave a lifetime achievement award to Farrakhan.

During Tuesday’s meeting with the press, Obama, in alluding to his Philadelphia speech, said that “the intention” of the latter “was to provide context” for Wright’s sermons, “but not to excuse them, because” Obama “found them inexcusable.” Well, if Wright’s comments -— what Obama now refers to as “rants that aren’t grounded in truth” -— are no less excusable now than they were last month, why did Obama insist on abandoning “the context” within which he initially grounded them? Again, nothing has changed.

Well, maybe two things have changed.

Obama’s prospects for the presidency have been severely damaged by the man who brought him to Christ, and Wright has personally offended his parishioner of many years. “And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing” (emphasis mine). A little later on, Obama reiterates: “I don’t think that he showed much concern for me.”

So when Wright refers to “the US of KKK A” and says all manner of outrageous statements about the country to whose highest office Obama aspires, the latter treats them as snippets that have been stripped of context. But when Wright threatens to undermine Obama’s goals, that’s when Obama has had enough. It is then that he abandons “context.”

Let there be no misunderstandings about it, for all of his talk of transcending the “old” politics of “divisiveness,” Obama is as crass a political opportunist as we have ever seen. It is for this reason that the question of whether his denunciation of Wright’s comments implies a denunciation of Wright himself is really beside the point. He presumably had no problem with his “former” pastor until Wright started to hurt him.