RUSH: I asked a question earlier of those who were to be calling, and none of you have deigned to answer it. It might be my fault. I haven’t asked you once I’ve had you on the phone. The question was this: ‘Obama’s speech today: Does it help him secure the Democrat Party nomination — which he clearly leads — or does it hurt?’ Now, there are two ways to look at this. One of the ways that it might hurt is that he walked into the trap today that the Clintons had been laying for him since South Carolina. They have been trying to portray this guy as somebody that’s only going to only appeal to black people. That’s what Bill Clinton was talking about prior to the South Carolina primary. They went down there, and they clearly played the race card. They were trying to divide the Democrat electorate and, in the process, scare white voters into voting for Hillary, or at least against Obama. So today, Obama went out there, and made this great speech. It’s a Rorschach test speech: You can make it whatever you want it to be. He had been the candidate who ‘transcended race.’ Now he is the candidate of race and race is the issue in the Democrat Party. When really this was never about race; it was about the hatred of that preacher. Here’s Sally Quinn. She had a comment on PMSNBC after the speech today. You know, she’s the wife of Ben Bradley, the editor emeritus of the Washington Post.
QUINN: I thought that it was particularly courageous of him not to repudiate Jeremiah Wright as a human being and as his friend. Jeremiah Wright is in his late sixties now. But I thought that the most extraordinary part of it was that when you — which has always been one of Obama’s major attractions to people, is that he seemed authentic, that there was a truthfulness about what he spoke, that you really believed that what he was saying was what he truly believed and that he was looking at all sides. And, again, brought everybody together. It was a — it was a very unifying speech.
RUSH: Oh, grab me the Stradivarius. (violin sounds) Now, we’re back to ‘unity.’ He brought everybody together. Ms. Quinn, can I ask you a question? If Obama is so accomplished at bringing people together, how come everybody in his immediate orbit is angry as hell? His wife’s mad. He hasn’t been able to bring his preacher together with anything. I don’t even know that he’s tried. So, yeah, he can sound all for unity and bring everybody together, but where is the evidence? This is what we ask. Also, Obama himself, in the speech, said, ‘We have choice. We can play Reverend Wright sermons on every channel, every day, and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.’ By the way, there’s no question here. Contrary to his earlier suggestion, Obama acknowledged in his speech today he had heard controversial remarks by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Even though on his TV tour last Friday, said: I never heard these things. When I first heard these things, that’s when I went into action, went into gear.
The TV tour didn’t work Friday night, so hence the speech today. He went on to say, you can play these Reverend Wright speeches all day long if you want, but that’s not going to get us anywhere because if we’re going to continue to do that, we’re going to continue to have the problem. I thought I heard a little bit of… Blackmail is too strong a word. It’s too strong a word. But he was essentially saying here, ‘You want to keep playing this, the Reverend Wright speeches? You want to keep having comments by Hillary supporters? You want this, or we can move on, and we can change.’ Well, I think that we need to have at least a Reverend Wright segment on this program every day, so that the people of this country know full well what’s going on in the church of the leading Democrat presidential candidate. We have, let’s say, General Petraeus come on and gives a report: ‘We are winning in America! We are winning in Iraq! The surge is showing some progress. We have a lot of work to go,’ and then intercut Reverend Wright, ‘God (bleep) America!’ We could have somebody making a great, great quote in testament to the successes you see of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. ‘This is a country run by rich white people.’ Just as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen.
WRIGHT: The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied! The government lied about Pearl Harbor. (cheering) They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Government’s lied. We’ve got a paranoid group of patriots in power that now, in the interests of homeland stupidity (cheers) — I mean homeland security. The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis! [snip] ‘Fighting for peace,’ is like raping for virginity. [snip] What’s going on in white America, US of KKKA, black men turning on black men. That is fighting the wrong enemy. You both are the primary targets in an oppressive society, that sees both of you as a dangerous threat. [snip] We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing Al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag (cheers and applause), and guess what else? If they don’t find them some weapons of mass destruction, they gonna do that like the LAPD (wild cheering) and plant some weapons of mass destruction.
(playing of Jeremiah Was My Pastor parody song)