March 13, 2008, A Sermon's Echoes Threaten Obama
By Chris Suellentrop
News stories by ABC News and Fox News on the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, are creating a stir in blogland. ABC News leads with Wright saying, in 2003, "God damn America" ("for killing innocent people," "for treating our citizens as less than human," and "for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme"). Fox leads with a more recent sermon, from January, in support of Obama's candidacy, and a Christmas sermon in which, Fox's Jeff Goldblatt writes, "Wright tried to compare Obama's upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans."
Roger L. Simon, the screenwriter and mystery novelist, thinks the sermons are a big deal. "As we all know, we don't choose our family, but Obama chose this racist (sic) demagogue (sic) as his pastor for decades. It's not funny," Simon writes on his personal blog. "It could do for Obama what Willie Horton did for Dukakis," Simon later adds. "But unlike the Willie Horton ad, Obama will deserve this. Horton was a mistake by Dukakis that any of us could have made. Jeremiah Wright was Obama's personal choice for years." [...]
Full: <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/a-sermon-echoing-around-obama/index.html?ref=opinion>