TOLEDO, Ohio – The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama‘s fiery ex-pastor, re-emerged yesterday with a crude reference about race and sex in the White House.
“This ordinary boy [Obama] just might be the first president in the history of the United States to have a black woman sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania legally,” Wright said, referring to Michelle Obama, in a sermon at the Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston.
It was unclear whether Wright was making a reference to prostitution, to old miscegenation laws, or to the history of illicit interracial sex under slavery.
Wright’s remarks yesterday were full of praise for Obama – although several times, he referred to Obama as a “boy” who later developed into an extraordinary person, through God’s work and, presumably, Wright’s guidance.
“The lord turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. Y’all just saw it this past week. It was on national television,” Wright said to applause.
“An ordinary black boy raised in a single-parent home . . . walked into my office 20 years ago to talk about his dream for a community that concentrated on things that we could achieve in common.”
As Obama’s longtime minister, Wright married Barack and Michelle, and the couple worshiped at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago until Wright’s controversial sermons became public knowledge during the campaign.
Wright gave an over-the-top press conference that ultimately prompted Obama to leave the church this spring, after Wright blamed the United States for concocting the HIV virus and railed against US imperialism.
Wright also accused Obama of posturing in his criticism of Wright’s sermons, saying, “If Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected. Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”
Obama said afterward that he was “outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw.”
In recent weeks, Obama has worshipped at various churches in towns on his campaign schedule, as he did at a Lutheran church in Lima, Ohio, yesterday.
In sermons that caused the initial uproar when they emerged on video, Wright blamed the United States for the 9/11 attacks and boomed, “God damn America.”