In Focus: Obama Would Leave Church If Wright Didn't Retire

Bill Clinton must secretly envy Barack Obama ability to have it both ways. In the candidate’s speech about his vile pastor Jeremiah Wright, he said: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” which comment earned additional praise from liberals who were already carried aloft on Obama’s honied words to the Xanadu of post-partisan politics. Wasn’t it brave of him not to repudiate his pastor like that?

Well now he’s repudiated him on the daytime talkshow The View:

“Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country — for all its flaws — then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying there at the church.”

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Of course, it has been twenty years of faithfully weighing the two Wrights in his own mind — the anti-American conspiracist and the kindhearted merchant of hope. Good thing Obama entered the political spotlight and had the country do his preacher “vetting” for him. Good thing, too, Wright decided to hang up his dashiki not a moment too soon.

Not that he should be upset over this mild snubbing. He’s retiring in comfort, moving into a 10,000-plus square foot home in suburban Chicago that’s valued at $1.6 million and was at least partially secured through a mortgage made by Trinity United Church of Christ. Nothing suspect in that, but it might not play well with all those parishoners Wright has convinced over the years that “black values” are incompatible with middle-class wealth.

Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute asks: “[W]hen did Wright acknowledge that what he had said was deeply offensive and inappropriate? The AP story recounts some of Wright’s controversial comments but oddly omits to mention his apology, as does all other news coverage with which I am familiar. And I am strangely certain that a Wright apology would have made the news – unless he never made it publicly.”

But Allahpundit at Hot Air doesn’t “read it that way at all. I think he’s speaking purely hypothetically, if inartfully: If Wright was still pastor of the church and if he refused to apologize for the sermons, then Obama would have to quit. Since he’s not still pastor, there’s no need to quit irrespective of whether Wright has apologized or not.”

And Gateway Pundit isn’t buying a word of any of it: “The truth is– We all know he’d still be sitting in the front row at Trinity if tapes of his anti-American mentor of 20 years were not making the cable news shows.”