May 9, 2008

by Bill Levinson

Transcript: Rev. Wright at the National Press Club

I’ve said, as I said on Bill Moyers, when Louis Farrakhan speaks, it’s like E.F. Hutton speaks, all black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.

Now, I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan anymore than Mandela would put down Fidel Castro. Do you remember that Ted Koppel show, where Ted wanted Mandela to put down Castro because Castro was our enemy? And he said, “You don’t tell me who my enemies are. You don’t tell me who my friends are.”

Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains. He did not put me in slavery. And he didn’t make me this color.

In addition to suggesting that Louis Farrakhan, a prominent racist, anti-Semite, and Catholic-hating bigot, is somehow representative of African Americans, Wright even suggests there is something wrong with being Black: “Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy… he didn’t make me this color.” It is critical to remember that Barack Obama knew about Jeremiah Wright’s association with Louis Farrakhan before he joined Wright’s church. Furthermore, Obama’s Dreams From My Father says that Obama occassionally read Farrakhan’s newspaper, The Final Call.

I would occasionally pick up the paper [The Final Call] from these unfailingly polite men, in part out of sympathy to their heavy suits in the summer, their thin coats in winter; or sometimes because my attention was caught by the sensational, tabloid-style headlines (CAUCASIAN WOMAN ADMITS: WHITES ARE THE DEVIL). Inside the front cover, one found reprints of the minister’s [Farrakhan's] speeches, as well as stories that could have been picked straight off the AP news wire were it not for certain editorial embelleshments (“Jewish Senator Metzenbaum announced today…”).

“Dreams From My Father,” page 201

Obama then goes on to discuss the Nation of Islam’s POWER toiletries such as toothpaste, which were part of a strategy to keep Black money in Black communities. “It seems that many who enjoyed Minister Farrakhan’s speeches continued to brush their teeth with Crest,” Obama complains on the same page while calling this racist, anti-Semite, and Catholic-hating bigot “Minister” and saying nothing at all to condemn the hate speech he says he saw in The Final Call–just as he must certainly have read and heard Jeremiah Wright’s hateful editorials and sermons.