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B.O. blames '60s for pastor's comments
Barack Obama on Friday blamed fiery 1960s-era conditioning for racially inflammatory remarks by his former pastor and a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton.In a wide ranging interview with Tribune editors and reporters, Obama denounced controversial sermons from Rev. Jeremiah Wright in which the just-retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago called on blacks to condemn the United States and accused U.S. leaders of state-sponsored terrorism that invited the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. At the same time, Obama sought to explain the context of those and other controversial Wright statements by drawing a connection to recent comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the former New York congresswoman. Ferraro recently stepped down from Clinton's campaign after saying that Obama enjoyed an electoral advantage over Clinton in the Democratic presidential contest because he was black. Both Wright, who is 66, and Ferraro, who is 72, were products of the often violent and racially divisive '60s and were stuck in a time warp, Obama explained. Obama compared Wright to an uncle he was fond of but with whom he disagreed, adding: "Like a lot of African American men of fierce intelligence who came of age [then], he has a lot of the language and the memories and the baggage of those times." Obama said he didn't attend controversial Wright sermons excerpts of which are now circulating on the Internet. Posted by: Fred 2008-03-16 |
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