CNN Spin for Obama's Pastor

Update: I wonder how the media will spin Obama's church claiming that the "White Church is the Anti-Christ?"

On Anderson Cooper’s CNN blog, Roland Martin spins out of control in an effort to help sweep up the mess left from pastorgate. He claims that Rev. Wright was only quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force. He is particularly claiming that the controversial sermon that includes the quote, “chickens have come home to roost” was a quote from Peck. He goes on to provide what I guess is supposed to be the quote in question. However, if you watch the start of this video, Wright reveals exactly who the quote comes from....Malcom X!

One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.” He was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation.
He was quoting Peck as saying that America’s foreign policy has put the nation in peril:

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.
“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

Confederate Yankee fills us in on where the quote was more likely to have come from:

The most famous single citation of “The Chickens Coming Home to Roost” was as an alternate title of the Malcolm X speech, God’s Judgement of White America, where X attributed the assassination death of John F. Kennedy to the historical evils of white America at that time.

I suspect that is a far more likely source for Wright’s invocation of that particular phrase, especially when we consider the historical contexts of both Wright’s speech after 9/11, and X’s speech after Kennedy was killed.

At best, Jeremiah Wright credits here a “A white ambassador” for saying “Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism.”

There is no support provided by Martin for the claim that Peck said anything about “chickens coming home to roost,” or any of the rest of what he cited.

A small excerpt from Ace’s rant:

So, CNN: He was just quoting Peck, huh? Just putting Peck’s quote into “context”?

Gee, funny how such a key quote — the one you claim lets Wright off the hook — is entirely absent from your lying article.

More from Confederate Yankee:

Wright does indeed invoke Peck, and in particular, where Peck invokes the specific Malcolm X speech cited above.

In short, Martin is being duplicitous when he claims that Wright was citing Peck, he was instead citing Malcom X through Peck.

In the long run it doesn’t really matter who Wright was quoting. He spoke it and believed it. The only reason it matters is that it is another example of dishonesty and bias in the MSM.