In 1995, Barack Obama gave a TV interview to discuss the memoir he wrote, "Dreams From My Father." Philip Klein at The American Spectator picked up on this back in August, but the video is making rounds again now. Obama spoke very highly of his then pastor Rev.Jeremiah Wright(my empahasis added:)
OBAMA: In times of economic scarcity, ahm, generally, ahh, the politicians in this country, right now, ahh, want to look for scapegoats, want to organize around race, as opposed to around principle, and around values, ahh, and I think that's a mistake, and I think that can be countered, but it's gonna require the kinds of grassroots mobilization, ahh, and, and the kinds of work at a local level that I think, ahh, I talk about a lot in, in those chapters on Chicago.
INTERVIEWER: Wonderful man there, Reverend Wright?
OBAMA: Right! And...
INTERVIEWER: Yeah...
OBAMA: ...ahh, who is, who is, ahh, my pastor, and, ahh, he is a wonderful man, and I think it, ahh, that's an example of, ahh, he's a pastor of a, of a large congregation in Chicago, and one of the interesting things that I discovered in my journey to discover...
INTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm...
OBAMA: ...what my identity is, and who my father is, is also discovering sort of, ahh, my own faith, which, which is not, ahh, necessarily a traditional faith - I don't come out of an institutionalized religious setting, but, ahh, ahh, what becomes important to me is I work with, ahh, churches in...
INTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm...
OBAMA: ...the South Side of Chicago in low income neighborhoods, ahh, is to realize that, you know, all the stories and songs of the church, ahh, you know that, that, the hope that is embodied...
INTERVIEWER: Yeah...
OBAMA: ...in the church, that, that the sense of, of, of, of liberation that is embodied in the African-Am, historically African-American church, ahh, is really something that, that, that moves me deeply, and I think ahh, ahh, is probably the main pillar around which a lot of inner cities', ahh, communities are going to be built, and Reverend Wright ahh, ahh, my pastor who, I, I speak about in the chapter in the book, I think represents the best of what, ah, The Black Church has to offer.
The mainstream media missed this early interview of Obama and how Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ helped shape his views. Jeremiah Wright has disappeared from the media radar since videos like this past were broadcast on TV and went viral all over the web.
UPDATED 7pm EST. 10/31/08
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