A Chicago pastor and spiritual adviser of Barack Obama mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton from the pulpit of the Illinois senator’s church – saying her famous tearing-up moment was fueled by self-pitying feelings of “I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show.”
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a longtime Obama ally and political supporter, made the shocking remarks from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ Sunday.
That’s the former base of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s ex-pastor, whose statements blasting the United States and calling AIDS a government plot have caused headaches for the candidate.
Pfleger, who is white and usually preaches at the mostly-black St. Sabina’s Catholic Church, said people need to end “white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head.”
Pfleger said he believed Clinton’s tearing-up in New Hampshire – a moment widely credited with helping her win the primary there – wasn’t a “put-on.”
“I really believe that she just always thought, ‘This is mine! I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white, and this is mine! I just gotta get up and step into the plate,’ ” he said. “And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,’ and she said, ‘Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’
“She wasn’t the only one crying,” he added, and feigned weeping. “There was a whole lot of white people crying.”
Obama, who has disavowed Wright, said, , “As I have traveled this country, I’ve been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us.
“That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn’t reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together.”
Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson suggested Obama should “specifically reject” the mocking, adding, “Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together.”
Unlike Wright, Pfleger apologized, saying: “I regret the words I chose on Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Sen. Obama’s life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them.”
Obama has been friends with Pfleger since his days as a community organizer. He took part in an Iowa event for Obama last fall, and a 2004 Chicago Sun-Times piece said he gives Obama “spiritual counsel.”
Meanwhile, a Catholic preacher lambasted Obama and Wright at a New York state GOP dinner in Midtown headlined by Vice President Dick Cheney last night.
Monsignor Jim Lisante of Rockville Centre, LI, praised GOP nominee Sen. John McCain and said, “A lot more of us would be comfortable with [Obama’s] judgment skills if he hadn’t sat for 20 years through the words offered by his preacher of division, bigotry . . . without a word of rejection from Sen. Obama – that is, until the media brought it up. And now he doesn’t want any part of the guy. I’m willing to be his pastor.”
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor replied that McCain once sought support from the Rev. John Hagee – who called Catholics “God’s whores” and said the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to return Jews to Israel – and then “waited months” to disavow him.