...MS. NORRIS: Well, I think, I think they have no escape from this because it keeps coming up. And Barack Obama dealt with this directly yesterday, saying that this is sort of a generational shift, that certain people who are, come out of the 1960s and talking about Jeremiah Wright, carry with them--I think he said that men of ferocious intelligence who came out of the 1960s, whose, whose ambitions were stymied, carry with them the anger and the baggage of that in trying to explain some of the rhetoric there.
You know, I should say, though, where Jeremiah Wright is concerned, it's interesting. If you--or introduced to him for the first time just based on the clips that you showed on this program and that have been in heavy rotation, particularly on cable news and on talk radio, you don't get the full measure of, of, of this man and who he is and a sort of full understanding of why Barack Obama may have been attracted to him. Barack Obama is in a difficult position because he has said repeatedly "Words count." And so he can't diminish these words or, or easily step away from them.
But if you just focus on the words, it seems that you ignore something very important. When Jeremiah Wright makes these statements, the amen chorus in that church was very loud. His words resonate with a large number of African-Americans, and the blunt language that he used makes people uncomfortable, you know, when he talks about America's inglorious record on race. And yet many people find, find something that they relate to in those words, and that's what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may want to start focusing on, is this chasm that both Ferraro dustup and the Jeremiah Wright dustup seems to point to in this country.
MR. RUSSERT: And yet many African-Americans have said to me in the last 48 hours that their concern was that Obama be seen not as a new kind of African-American leader and that we get caught up in those kinds of climates, comments and hyperbole, which will frighten white Americans and create difficulty for Obama in uniting the country.
MS. NORRIS: That's part of why he was so fresh and new is that he was a voice that was without anger.
MR. BRODER: Well, and I said, I said to Michele a moment ago that what's striking to me is that I don't know Reverend Wright except for these clips, and that's not a basis for judging his whole approach or personality, but his tone seems so far removed from the tone that Obama has tried to strike, not just in this campaign but throughout his political career, that it raises a question in my mind: What was it about Reverend Wright that attracted Obama when he had, as a newcomer to Chicago, choice of any of the number of churches or pastors to go to?
MS. NORRIS: You know, when you talk about tone, though, it's interesting. You're talking about his tone and not his words. The, the sort of fire from the pulpit...
MR. BRODER: Yes.
MS. NORRIS: ...is, is not something that is unusual in an African-American church. That is, that is some--and in fact, in many churches in America. And so what you're dealing with in these, in these statements is in part the words, but also in, in the way that they were delivered. And you're right in noting that is very different from, from what Barack Obama hears. But it's not altogether different from, from what many people are hearing at this moment in churches all across America. [continued]
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