I think this quote from Hillary Clinton deserves more examination than it has received in the press:
I have to say that, you know, for Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been just intolerable for me. And, therefore, I would have not been able to stay in the church.
And maybe it's, you know, just, again, a personal reflection that, regardless of whatever good is going on, and I have no reason to doubt that a lot of good things were happening in that church.
You get to choose your pastor. You don't choose your family, but you get to choose your pastor. And when asked a direct question, I said I would not have stayed in the church.
This diary is an invitation to think about that quote from the Pennsylvania debate.
I'd like to ask, first off, what you would think if someone told you that they wouldn't be a member of your church and in doing so made it seem like your church was associated with the extremely controversial position of blaming America for 9/11, especially if that was a gross over-simplification of one of your pastor's sermons?
Would you appreciate that? Would it make you think more highly of the person making that accusation?
That's exactly what happened in the Pennsylvania debate.
It slipped under the radar a bit. That doesn't excuse it.
Hillary Clinton restated that she would not be a member of Barack Obama's church and elaborated that by linking her rejection of Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ (a 6,000 member mainline largely African-American Protestant congregation on Chicago's South Side) with blaming the United States for 9/11.
I know that some would love for us to move immediately to parsing exactly what Rev. Wright said as a way of supporting the idea that Clinton was justified in rejecting Wright, his sermon and his church based on her interpretation of Wright's words.
I'd like to say something, however, in response to the rush to focus on Wright and parse his words and play out of context clips of him over and over and over and over and over again...
Whoa! Back up for one second!
The focus on Reverend Wright is a symptom of the problem here.
Why is one Democratic candidate saying that they would not belong to their opponent's church in a nationally televised debate? Why is that an acceptable statement to make? How is that relevant to choosing our nominee? Has anyone ever said that in a national presidential debate before?
When asked a direct question, I said I would not have stayed in the church.
Putting aside Clinton's rationales about Wright's sermon after 9/11, does that line of attack make any political sense?
How can attacking another candidate's church, whatever the words of one sermon, be considered good or acceptable politics?
I don't think it can.
And, further, I have something pretty simple to say.
If Clinton had gone out of her way to say she would not belong to a mosque or a synagogue or a Catholic Church or a Mormon Temple or Mike Huckabee's congregation in Arkansas because of her interpretation of a sermon she had not attended and probably had not listened to in full, her statement would not have passed, as it has, almost unremarked upon by the press.
However, for Clinton to say that she would reject Trinity United Church of Christ, a 6,000 member largely African-American mainline protestant congregation on Chicago's South Side for a controversial sermon by its former pastor is, it seems, unremarkable. The press and the media have not said a peep.
Clinton said she wouldn't belong to TUCC and no one batted an eye.
Hillary Clinton has received a complete and total free pass for using a McCarthy-esque, 9/11-based, right-wing attack on Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ in an attempt to destroy the campaign of Barack Obama.
It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to. And I think that it wasn't only the specific remarks but some of the relationships with Reverend Farrakhan, with giving the church bulletin over to the leader of Hamas, to put a message in.
Why did she say that in the PA debate...in effect making the linkage Obama = Wright + TUCC = Farrakhan + Hamas?
I don't know. You tell me.
It was possible, after all, to criticize Reverend Wright without saying you would not be a member of his church. It's also possible to do so without stating in naked terms that as a New Yorker you think Wright blamed the United States for the 9/11 attacks.
That was in and of itself an utterly remarkable statement for Senator Clinton to have made.
Many religious figures in the United States asked their houses of worship to engage in self-reflection after 9/11. Would Clinton compose a list of churches she would not belong to or go to or solicit political support from based on that metric? Will she return campaign donations from people who belong to those churches? If she is the nominee will she visit TUCC or will she maintain and expand on this line of attack?
Clinton went beyond criticism of Wright; she went out of her way in a nationally televised debate to go scorched earth on the Trinity United Church of Christ. Clinton personalized her rejection of that church as a whole. She made a deeply shaming and powerful political attack on thousands of people couched in terms of her "personal choice."
Why?
Why would she do that? What political rationale motivated her?
Let's remember the context here.
Barack Obama had already rejected Reverend Wright's rhetoric. He'd already explicitly disavowed that sermon which he did not attend. He'd also spent 30 minutes explaining in nuanced terms where we stand in regards to race as a nation and that included making highly critical statements regarding Reverend Wright and his political mindset.
It was in that context that Clinton, instead of referring to Obama's speech and building on it, took up a Republican line of attack on Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ.
Clinton used a scorched-earth, 9/11-based attack on Obama's church as a means to attack Barack Obama knowing everything Barack Obama had already said on the matter.
Are Super Delegates paying attention?
Hillary Clinton has shown what she thinks that 6,000 votes on the South Side of Chicago...and the votes of millions of Americans who think it's not acceptable that Trinity United Church of Christ be thrown under the wheels of political expediency. Clinton has also shown that she thinks that attacking an opposing candidate's house of worship is fair game in a televised debate.
In that, Hillary Clinton is deeply, grievously, morally wrong. She is also practicing heinously destructive politics.
Clinton is free to disagree with Reverend Wright. Barack Obama did just that in Philadelphia.
But she went further than that.
Senator Clinton went scorched earth on Barack Obama's church.
And, as far as I can tell, nobody's called her on it.
In all likelihood, nobody in the media will.