How is the bus still moving forward?

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on May 31, 2008

First it was his white grandmother. Then it was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Tonight, Sen. Barack Obama held a press converence and the threw Trinity United Church of Christ under the bus too.

(As an aside, if you played the "uhhh" = 1 drink game, you'd be sauced in less than 2 minutes.)

The straw that broke the Senator's back was this unhinged rant by visiting "preacher par excellance" Michael Pfleger.

Note that the audience isn't shocked by any of this. They aren't walking out. The original Obama line that the Wright soundbites were taken out of context and didn't represent what he heard every time he attended that church are revealed as lies.

Here's the truth:

"We don't want to have to answer for everything that's stated in the church," the Democratic front-runner said. "We also don't want the church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes."

For a man of principle, this is a very political decision. And, honestly, if Trinity were really as Obama described it earlier as a place that is not particularly controversial, then he wouldn't be needing to to answer for much of anything stated in the church. As for scrutiny of the church, well, any church should be able to withstand the kind of scrutiny Trinity has had.

[On a media-related note: If Obama's charge that members of the media were taking church bulletins and using them to get the numbers of homebound church members and then harassing them, those reporters should be exposed and sacked.]

And then the equivocating begins:

Obama: It's not infrequent, for example, if you go into a church and a comment is made that suggests, for example, an aversion to gays and lesbians. That's something that I do not believe in. And if I heard that from the pulpit, I would strongly object to it.

Funny how that would be something he would strongly object to, but alleging the U.S. government created AIDS in order to kill black people or that "white man's greed runs a world in need" don't quite reach that "I would strongly object" bar.

Obama's resume is so thin, especially for the job to which he aspires, that you can't take the measure of him strictly from his speeches and white papers. The old saying about judging someone by the company he keeps comes to mind here. He campaigns as a post-racial candidate, yet he attended a church that preaches racial resentment regularly. He claims to be a different kind of politician, yet he involved himself with fixer Tony Rezko who is now on trial for corruption. He claims to be a moderate who can bring Americans together, yet he launched his first political campaign in the home of two unrepentant '60s radicals and terrorists.

I wouldn't trust this guy to run the cash register at a mini-mart, let alone the United States.

It'd be interesting to hear the answer to this question, but don't expect the press to ask it: Are other members of Trinity United Church of Christ also revoking their memberships? Or is it just the guy who's running for nationwide office?

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