Context Is The Second Last Refuge of a Scoundrel (Who Happens to Find Patriotism Distasteful)

Fr. Pfleger has published a self-absolving explanation in the Chicago Sun-Times about his bad behavior of last Sunday.

Reading it, I can see that Fr. Pfleger doesn’t borrow only his preaching style from the likes of Rev. Wright, but his public apology talking points as well.

Father’s excuse is that he was taken out of context. Rather than seeing the compassionate, Martin-Luther-King inspired hero of justice and civil rights, we’re all getting the wrong idea about Fr. Pfleger based on a “a 1.5 minute 'YouTube' video” … stolen, apparently, “from a dramatization in a sermon that I felt was in the sacredness of a sanctuary, among people who know me”.

Was it only 1.5 minutes, Father? Because it seemed so much longer. (The main fun was actually 3:00 minutes).

Oh, by the way, if brief duration avoids moral liability, maybe we should we check the clock time on “nappy-headed ho”; or Trent Lott saying “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.” (For Lott’s ten-second tribute to a 100-year-old man, Barack Obama demanded that “The Republican Party … has to drive out Trent Lott.”

The "out of context" excuse Fr. Pfleger offers backfired on Jeremiah Wright, too. Within days, by means of reviews of his complete sermons, and his own statements to Bill Moyers, and what he had to say at the NAACP dinner, and then at the National Press Club, we all knew for certain that the damned foolishness he displayed in the out-takes ran pretty constant through all his many years as a religious charlatan.

Even without seeing the rest of Father Pfleger's Sunday "sermon," we have seen him allowing the Christ- and Jew-hating Farrakhan into the sanctuary at St. Sabina's so that he could kiss Farrakhan's ass and give Farrakhan a platform to patronize the Catholic congregation Fr. Pfleger is accountable for instructing. Fr. Pfleger also rebukes those of us as "liars from the pit of hell") who call attention to the depth of Farrakhan's anti-Semitism and bitter racism. If Farrakhan isn't a racist, NO one is. (Father also does one of the worst black-guy impersonations in the Midwest, but my confessor informs me that's only a venial sin).

We've also seen him tell his Bishop, whom we Catholics believe to be direct successors of the Apostles, that he wouldn't obey orders to accept transfer from his parish, saying, "You're going to have to have the balls to fire me."

Fr. Pfleger says one thing I agree with: “racism is an explosive and sensitive sin in our world and it is against the command to love, and against the God of love.”

It is indeed. And that means that you, Fr. Pfleger, shouldn’t be whipping up black folks, either. And for doing that, you ought to make an Act of Contrition for sinning against the command of love, and against the God of love.

Obama: 'Change We Can Believe In Starts with Church'

From the New York Times:

Obama Quits His Church

By Jeff Zeleny

WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama is ending his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation he has belonged to for about two decades and one that had become a lightning rod in his Democratic presidential bid.

Really, now, what else could Senator Obama do? He joined this church, I believe, because he wanted to punch his south Chicago ticket as proof he was a down black politician.

If only the steps he'd learned to dance along with Chicago's radical politico-clerico machine were the same he'd need to take to be a serious national figure, a unifier, and a credible presidential candidate. But, to paraphrase one of Barack's three spiritual advisors, Fr. Pfleger, Obama is telling himself:

"I’m BLACK. And this is mine. And I jus’ gotta get up. And step into the plate. And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Father Pfleger!’ And he said: ‘Oh, damn!’ WHERE DID YOU COME FROM!?!?!"

Fr. Pfleger came from the same place Reverend Wright came from, and Louis Farrakhan, and Bill Ayers, and the rest. They came straight from the grab-basket of Obama's political past, each one of them lovingly selected for what they could do to help a slick, handsome, trans-racial Harvard grad get on the fast track to Destiny, with a starting place in south side Chicago.

But what works in city politics for trading off votes, graft, youth centers, and getting easy laughs from "community organized" congregations somehow doesn't translate to the weightier matters that the leader of the free world has to face. Obama is the living embodiment of the slogan about not needing enemies when you have friends like these. Could he have possibly selected a group better calculated to convince the nation he never met a loudmouthed, obstreperous, idiot he didn't like? (If I hear one more of these jokers say that Jeremiah Wright is one of the most brilliant biblical scholars in the world I'm going to vomit on my keyboard).

Obama's problem today is that he's going through a cycle that most of go through as young people, anywhere between young adulthood and middle age, when we come to a new view of things, and shed some of the foolish associations of the past, and the foolish ideas of our youth. We laugh at ourselves a bit: "I used to think that?! I said that?!" It's all part of growing up.

At least, in Obama's case, he's shedding the foolish associations, with the gentle prompting of the conservative press. And he's doing so at record speed. It's a healthy thing, by and large. Maybe he'll start shedding the foolish ideas soon, too. Everything in good time.

You just don't want somebody still going through that in the Oval Office.