Derrick Bell Spoke at Jeremiah Wright’s Church?
That’s what Joel Pollak seems to be saying in this piece:
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s incendiary Chicago pastor, admired radical Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell, inviting him to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ and referring to him from the pulpit.
It’s an invitation that was apparently accepted, according to Ben Shapiro, who confirms it in this post about Critical Race Theory:
[Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is] what Obama believed – and believes.
And that is why Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright was so dangerous for him. Wright was a big backer of CRT. Bell spoke at Wright’s church. The problem was that Wright was a CRT supporter with the fiery passion of the critical race theorists, and without the gentle soothing language that Obama was so careful to cultivate. And so it was extremely important for Obama to disassociate from Wright, and CRT, as soon as possible during his 2008 presidential run. The conflict between Obama’s belief in CRT and his political need to move away from CRT is obvious throughout his 2008 Wright-under-the-bus speech. First, he disowns Wright’s “profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.” He pays lip service to the Constitution. Then he proceeds to talk about all that is wrong with America and little that is right with it, to bash the America that arose under the Constitution, and to suggest that “we’ve never really worked through” the problem of race in America.
Bell’s speaking at Wright’s church is mentioned as a seeming afterthought in both Pollak’s and Shapiro’s posts. I’m not sure whether this apparent burying of the lede is deliberate or inadvertent. It could be part of a rollout strategy.
In any event, they sound pretty confident about this.
I have no idea what evidence they have to back this up.
I hope it’s videos.
If you look at Bell’s pics, he strikes a lot of effeminate poses… another member of Wright’s “down low” club?
Three Openly Gay Men at Rev Wright’s Chicago Church KILLED the Very Month Obama’s Ascent to the Nomination Began?
Reaganite Republican (99f6b1) — 3/11/2012 @ 11:47 pmI can’t imagine the thought process to baptize your daughters into a crt church! Racist piece of shit. Were all Breitbart now.
[note: released from moderation. –Stashiu]
sickofrinos (44de53) — 3/12/2012 @ 3:02 amBell as warm-up act for Father Pfleger?
Icy (d4608c) — 3/12/2012 @ 3:06 amNot seeing how this is going to matter to the general public.
Random (38d59c) — 3/12/2012 @ 3:46 amPerhaps youse need to recalibrate yo E-meter.
Icy (d4608c) — 3/12/2012 @ 4:37 amI remain with #4 Random for now. So far, I’ve not seen/heard any game-changing bombshell that’s worse than spending 20 years in Wright’s church or palling around with domestic terrorists.
RB (e7b1bd) — 3/12/2012 @ 4:48 amI see.
So the President — who is a fag — had 3 of his fellow lovers and parishioners murdered. That is your theory?
Random (38d59c) — 3/12/2012 @ 4:51 amThis, and also he’s been President for 3 years. Peoplefeel like they know him or know of him. So unless Reaganite Republican Moby’s theory is true and there’s hard evidence of it, people are going to make their voting decision based on performance and even happenstance, but not on what Obama’s racial theories might have been. Frankly most of us have racial theories, including me — albeit based on evolutionary biology and scientific data.
Blaxk people in particular get a pass on racial beliefs considering the very real racism and abuse they suffered.
Anyway, at the end of the day this just does not equal starting his political career in the living room of the woman who served time for her role in the murder of two Chicago cops in an armored car terrorist financing heist or palling around with/having one of his two autobiographies ghostwritten by the guy whose organization bombed the Pentagon before Al Qaida existed.
Obama was friends with a black professor who had twisted, quirky, yet somewhat explicable racial views. Meh.
Wright priced all this stuff in long ago.
Random (38d59c) — 3/12/2012 @ 5:11 amNothing to see here. Move along.
JD (d246fe) — 3/12/2012 @ 5:39 amI’ve long sustained since I read ‘Faces’ or as much as I could stand of it, that Bell was as radical as
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 6:34 amWright, who I didn’t know then, but he was palling around with Quaddafi and Castro, the last under the protection of Fidel’
s DGI.
Comment by Random — 3/12/2012 @ 5:11 am
by the guy whose organization bombed the Pentagon before Al Qaida existed.
More significant, maybe they wanted to bomb the very library where he used to spend a lot of time in a dozen years later. Or that was what everybody thought was the target. They had maps, which were discovered. I am sure Obama must have been told by somebody that the Butler Library at Columbia University, where he used to spend a lot of time in, or the Low Library, was the target..
The Weathermen never said, for many years, what the target of the bomb they were building in the Greenwich Village townhouse had been. Until many years later when they said it was Fort Dix. After Obama knew Bill Ayers. I’ve got to look this stuff up again.
Obama was friends with a black professor who had twisted, quirky, yet somewhat explicable racial views. Meh.
Not a friend. A supporter. And they probably weren’t really Bell’s views. He just promoted them. He was a fraud. he may even have arranged big public disputes so he could leave a university or two in a huff rather than being challenged on – say, absences from classes.
Wright priced all this stuff in long ago.
They can always try again, with another little fact, but the real problem is this sort of at most “predicts” what kind of a president Obama might be. But now you can look at the record. Of course the aim at Breitbart might be to hopefully get Obama to respond and tie him up in a web of implausibilities and contradictions.
The other thing wrong is that the thesis is wrong. Just as with Reverend Wright, the reason he had these associations was not because he agreed with the ideas of or assertions of these people. There are actually things that contradict that notion.
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 6:50 amYes they did it was to attack Ft. Dix, the only question left is did Bell know Marcuse, the touchstone of the Weathermen, now Mark Rudd might
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 6:58 amvery well planned such a fate for his alma mater.
with Derrick Bell you have only 2 explanations Obama could give that do not impugn his character, neither one of them good.
1) He was ignorant of the ideas of these people.
2) He agreed with them.
He’d prefer we’d pick number 1, but that idea probably cannot stand scrutiny.
Actually he’d prefer number 3:
3) There was nothing particularly wrong or upsetting about the ideas of these people, (the claim of Soledad O’Brien)
But that’s only sustainable with people who don’t know much about them.
Now all these three explanations I think are wrong.
The real explanation is:
4) He was ambitious, he chose what looked like the easiest route for himself, he hid from anybody reservations about any ideas he encountered and he may not have been sensitive actually as to how bad some of these ideas were because they were so accepted in the quarters he was in, he was cautious, and he was a cynic.
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:04 amActually there’s also 2a
2a) He didn’t know enough to know there was anything wrong with any of the things any of these people said or wrote, and he didn’t pay attention anyway.
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:06 amThere is a continuity in his mentors ,from Frank Davis, to Gary Chapman at accidental, to Said, just
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:11 amone course we’re told, at Columbia, to Ayers to Wright to Khalidi, the last more a colleague.
Make that, pay too much attention.
You can wander from one of these ideas to another but every one of these possibilities is bad in one way or another for Obama, except there was nothing particularly wrong or upsetting about the ideas of these people
Which happens to be wrong. Not only that, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to tell.
So anyway, this is the rock and a hard place that Breitbart is trying to put Obama into. The problem for him comes when and if he attempts to explain these things because none of the explanations are good. They may alsonot be so overwhelming.
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:11 am==He was ambitious, he chose what looked like the easiest route for himself, he hid from anybody reservations about any ideas he encountered and he may not have been sensitive actually as to how bad some of these ideas were because they were so accepted in the quarters he was in, he was cautious, and he was a cynic.==
Thoughout his whole life he almost always voted “present”.
elissa (b47460) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:13 amAnd if it does come out that Bell spoke at Wright’s church, do you really think that’s going to matter? We went through this whole spiel in 08. What’s that definition of insanity again?
scogges (887299) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:31 amVoting for Obama, next question,
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:33 amWhy are 3 media players autostarting when I come to this page? Just noise coming out of the speakers until I can stop them.
CAL (01f3eb) — 3/12/2012 @ 7:42 amThank god you got the auto-play, too. Thought maybe my hard drive needed scraping.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 3/12/2012 @ 8:35 amI agree Obama cynically used his connections, as they have cynically used him. He is less a fire-breathing ideologue than a default adopter, a tag-along, an osmotic radical who has never seriously questioned the teachings of childhood or known another way to get ahead.
He doesn’t have the same, in-the-gut pride and love of the American Experiment that we do. He wasn’t raised on that, but rather the idea that America needed to be pressed into socialism/communism or something resembling it. Along this path he courted and was courted by Americans attached to the destruction of and contempt for the republic, usually at least tangentially related to communism but also graft machines built around it. This is his milieu and was always where his prospects for getting ahead lay.
We already knew that. We still know it. Those who don’t know it have heard of it and will discount it and continue to discount it, because they need to discount it.
If there is more video, and it is to land a seriously wounding blow, he will have to be hatey talking himself, not just watching or nodding.
Sarahw (b0e533) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:00 amComment by elissa — 3/12/2012 @ 7:13 am
Throughout his whole life he almost always voted “present”.
Abner Mikva claimed this was a common practice in the Illinois state legislature, and that it amounts to a no vote, because the vote in counted in the total of which you need a majority of yes votes for the resolution to pass.
Or I suppose it is like an an abstention at the United Nations.
It amounts to saying “my reasons for not voting yes are complicated.” and he would cite some kind of reason that did not imply generalized opposition.
In general, the way I would put his voting is more like:
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/firstlor.htm
Of course that was the British Parliament, or what it had become in the 1800s. United States legislatures are not supposed to be like that, although they are moving in that direction, and it’s not good. Another caveat:
Now Barack Obama didn’t vote exactly according to his *party’s* call, which wasn’t quite unified, but according to some sub group(s). He always pretended everything was his own independent thinking, of course, and has strived to be consistent
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:11 am_____________________________________________
“profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.”
Since many on the left love to characterize conservatives as racist or bigoted, it’s only keeping with the theme to suspect that most liberals at the very least sympathize with, if not grudgingly (or happily) support or admire, folks like Derrick Bell and Jeremiah Wright. Yep, generalizations or mis-characterizations on both accounts, but more of the latter than the former probably does apply to the ideological divide. Actually, that’s a given, since look at all the mainstream Democrats (eg, Hillary Clinton) who continue to make pilgrimages to a public figure who is but a slightly (just slightly) less extreme version of Derrick Bell, namely the notorious, infamous Al Sharpton.
Mark (31bbb6) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:12 am* the (present vote) is counted in the total of which you need a majority
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iog4c3WW_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzgaPEm-HYA
Lyrics with some explanation: http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/gilbert/porter.html
The pocket borough was a little bit of an anachronism already by 1877. We used to have what amounted almost to a pocket borough in the United States Senate – it was called that in the title of a book – Nevada – but Nevada now has more people in it than West Virginia!!
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:23 amI have confidence that President Obama will be able to talk his way out of this (as he’s always done) and be called brilliant in doing so.
For sure there are 35% of voters who will back him, no matter what, and another 35% who will vote against him, no matter what. A portion of the remaining 30% are in play – either to get out and vote or be so disenchanted that they stay home.
Data suggests that many of these 30% lie in the large “whites with no college degree” demo. To what extent does this campaign resonate with them.? Is there a “tune out” factor when we get into academic theory?
Some voters will have the desired A) reaction.
The MSM will be pushing the B) reaction with everything they’ve got.
So it would just be good to have some kind of actual insights to see how this version of the vetting campaign is playing out with the 30%. I hope Breitbart & Co or political affiliates have some actual private polling going on and are field testing these angles with the target voters. We can be sure that Axelrod has agencies doing just such research behind the scenes.
koam @wittier (b5f54f) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:26 amUnless Rev Wright shows up on 60 Minutes calling for a race war, he, and anything associated with him, are not going to matter to the public at large. It will just be preaching to the choir, so to speak.
Worse, to the degree that Republicans bring up racial issues, they had better be SIMPLE and CURRENT racial issues (like “Obama’s DoJ only hires radical blacks”). Otherwise all the public will hear is “race” and it will fall neatly into the Democrat/media narrative of “Only racists oppose Obama.”
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:26 am==He doesn’t have the same, in-the-gut pride and love of the American Experiment that we do. He wasn’t raised on that, but rather the idea that America needed to be pressed into socialism/communism or something resembling it.==
Sarah- In an interesting bull-session I had with a bunch of friends recently we talked about his obvious dis-connectedness with America and how sometimes he seems almost befuddled by traditional American values. We recognized the specific influential childhood years when he was in Hawaii and attended school in Indonesia. We got to laughing and tried to remember and rehash all the movies, popular songs, TV shows, slang expressions, commercials, etc. from those years that were the popular culture which subtly united us as Americans regardless of color, education, geography or religion. He missed all that. There were also lots of newspaper and magazine articles about the cold war, and fighting communism was still generally considered a worthy enterprise by most Americans living in the U.S. in those days.
elissa (b47460) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:29 amWe will either beat him on the economy, or we won’t beat him. Clinton had that right. Everything else is a distraction. This is as silly as Santorum’s drill-down on social issues.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:29 amComment by Mark — 3/12/2012 @ 9:12 am
24. public figure who is but a slightly (just slightly) less extreme version of Derrick Bell, namely the notorious, infamous Al Sharpton.
No, he’s worse. He’s actually participated in things that harmed people.
He’s also much closer to the Clintons than he is to Obama.
And I remember, Wednesday, July 21, 1993, the day there was a protest or rather a group of people who wanted to meet Janet Reno calling for a federal investigation into the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. And Al Sharpton showed up with a claim that the car accident that triggered the Crown Heights riot should be investigated and was ushered in. Actually that car accident should have been investigated because it was not an accident – a car ran a red light and pushed Yosef Lifsch’s car into the children.
(BTW, I sent an email to preident@whitehouse.gov on the afternoon of July 19, routed overnight through Rochester I think, and so delivered the next day, probably after William Sessions had been dismissed, which started out by asking that Janet Reno should not cover up the murder of Don Aronow, and I segued into all kinds of other things and warned them not to fire the FBI Director because reporters would be released from their pledges of confidentiality about Waco in particular how he was kept from the scene and his water cannon plan rejected, and they knew more than they wrote as you could see by reading that day’s Wall Street Journal editorial. and the next day Vincent Foster was dead – I now think that thinking the jig was up, he ran to the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, asking for money and tried to blackmail him and got shot, after which Prince Bandar rushed over to the White House fora secret meeting with President Clinton and Sandy Burglar where he explained the death and asked to cover it it up please. It’s not like they could punish him anyway)
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:40 am* Big Oops
Should be:
Janet Reno should not cover up the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum like she did that of Don Aronow
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:41 amSammy–you’ll get no dispute from me that the IL legislature has been a sham for years and that many games were/are being played every bill and vote. That said, most legislators manage to place strategic yes-no votes so they can pontificate and demonstrate their worth to their constituents. But Barack did not. He was known far and wide for voting a solid non- committal “present”. When you believe yourself to have a future calling to higher office it’s always best not to take a stand on anything or leave a record at all that might lead to later scrutiny.
elissa (b47460) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:43 amThe Obama administration just blocked the Texas Voter ID law.
it’s so aggravating seeing corrupt election fraudsters defeat election reform, but even worse, they do it in the name of election integrity from the Jim Crow era. Insult added to injury.
Should the GOP actually get some power, fixing our elections is extremely important. We had a shot to do this in the mid 2000s and we focused on short term issues, since we had the executive branch at the time so an AG like Holder was not a pressing issue.
Dustin (401f3a) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:52 amAnd when Holder says a voter ID requirement by disproportionately affect Hispanics, it sounds an awful lot like he’s saying it might keep some Mexican illegal immigrants from voting.
Why would an Hispanic in Texas not have ID? Of course the idea they can’t get one is either racist low expectations or an assumption some of those voting democrat aren’t eligible for ID.
Dustin (401f3a) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:54 am*might, not “by”.
I know my typos are strange.
Dustin (401f3a) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:55 amWhy would an Hispanic in Texas not have ID?
one possible reason I thought of is maybe they aren’t actually citizens
happyfeet (a55ba0) — 3/12/2012 @ 9:56 amAsk the 9/11 hijackers, pikachu, that isn’t a bar to them, they got it from the Salvadorans in Fairfax.
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 10:06 amSECEDE!
/half joking
Dustin (401f3a) — 3/12/2012 @ 10:06 amI gotta admit, Texas would make for a much nicer country than the one it’s in today. It would be more American, too.
The feds foist a lot of stupid programs on us and then expect us to be thankful for all the wasteful spending this causes, but a Texas free of the fed would be even more successful. In fact, if Texas seceded, the main program would be border control as Americans tried to immigrate here to flee the failing USA.
Ideally, DC can get a balanced budget like Texas has. But this is not possible. I actually think Texas seceding is more realistic (and it’s not realistic). So sad.
Dustin (401f3a) — 3/12/2012 @ 10:10 amPerhaps youse need to recalibrate yo E-meter.
Not only did this comment make me LOL but it also polled well with independent voters.
Sleestak (3681c4) — 3/12/2012 @ 10:51 amhttp://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/12/danny-davis-he-shares-our-values
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 11:02 am‘You asked for it, you got it, toyota;
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/12/soledad-obrien-stop-tweeting-me-about-derrick-bell/
narciso (87e966) — 3/12/2012 @ 11:29 amThank youse, Sleestak!
Vinnie Barbarino (d4608c) — 3/12/2012 @ 11:35 amComment by elissa — 3/12/2012 @ 9:43 am
That said, most legislators manage to place strategic yes-no votes so they can pontificate and demonstrate their worth to their constituents. But Barack did not. He was known far and wide for voting a solid non- committal “present”. When you believe yourself to have a future calling to higher office it’s always best not to take a stand on anything or leave a record at all that might lead to later scrutiny.
That’s probably exactly right. He anticipated having a different constituency later, so he wanted votes that could be interpreted different ways, but the other legislators, who anticipated keeping the same constituency, did want to take apparent stands. Even when a present vote was an effective no vote, it’s a little hard to communicate. Now where there cases where a yes vote was needed by his allies, and he avoided it?
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 11:50 am* were there cases? (not where)
Sammy Finkelman (63b67e) — 3/12/2012 @ 11:51 amJeremiah Wright and Derrick Bell believe in the same thing. So what?
tadcf (6f3ab1) — 3/12/2012 @ 1:17 pmThis troll is kind of dim/dum/obtuse.
JD (d246fe) — 3/12/2012 @ 2:59 pm#46. “so what?”
So you’re an ass-hat.
Gus (36e9a7) — 3/12/2012 @ 3:06 pmtexas our texas all hail the mighty state
clapclapclap
happyfeet (3c92a1) — 3/12/2012 @ 6:27 pm