I just watched, with some horror, the excerpt of Hilary Clinton's interview with Bill Orally and the wholeexchange just made me..., ugh, you read it...
O'Reilly: "Can you believe this Rev. Wright guy? Can you believe this guy?"
Clinton: "Well, I'm going to leave it up to voters to decide."
O'Reilly: "Well, what do you think as an American?"
Clinton: "Well, what I said when I was asked directly is that I would not have stayed in the church.
Ok, so let's stay here for a second and think this through. Somebody who is close to you and your family, who has charitable qualities and also says and does some, well, offensive and some would say horrifyingly awful things. What do you do? Do you abandon them? Hmm, well, even though you think that despite their stupid actions they can still do some great stuff for your community people ask you how can you hang in there? Sound familiar? Well, it should.
When I think of Hilary Clinton I do think of a fighter, but more and more I am thinking, "hypocrisy, thine name is...". What I would like to see, what I hope to see, is Barack decides that enough is enough and notes that Rev. Wright, until his recent self-serving tour, was someone he admired because he had done good in his community and, well, you just don't abandon people who are close to you and they do dumb things. If you did then Hilary should have left Bill. In fact, as private and difficult as that is to bring up, it isn't too far off, especially for those of us who grew up in religious households and understood that our Priests and Pastors were people who we respected and who came to our houses to break bread and give thanks. They are often thought of as part of our family. You just don't get rid of them despite some stupid stuff they said once, and you didn't even hear it. Heck, how many American Catholics stay with the Church and use birth control? How many Non-Denominational Christians remain in their churches even though they may not agree with their pastor's politics?
The point is that a Church is not only a serious commitment, but people who take it seriously know that it is a human institution that, like marriage, attempts to work through our many difficulties to achieve something more forgiving and more loyal than the mere sum of what we sinners, we flawed beings, are.
And now, Barack, I think you need to point it out and do it in a way that stings Sen. Clinton. It will remind her that Church, like marriage, is serious stuff and make you look like the fighter we need you to be.