The Baptism Of Obama

How To Sabotage Your Candidate

Dana Milbank:

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Obama:

"Some of the comments that Rev. Wright has made offend me, and I understand why they offend the American people. He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign."

On Rev. Wright's HIV Claim

Slate discusses Rev. Jeremiah Wright's charge that the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill blacks.

Barack Obama rebuked his former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday for giving sermons in which he blamed the government for creating a racist state and "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." Wright isn't the first to say that AIDS originated in the White House. Others have attributed the epidemic to a laboratory accident, malnutrition, or even God's divine will. Here's a field guide to the most prevalent conspiracy theories:

Government Involvement
The belief cited by Wright—that the government invented HIV—seems to have originated during the early years of the epidemic. In 1986, crackpot East German biologist Jakob Segal published "AIDS: USA Home-Made Evil." According to the pamphlet, scientists at a Fort Detrick, Md., military lab manufactured the disease by synthesizing HTLV-1 (a retrovirus that causes T-cell leukemia) with Visna (a sheep virus). The scientists administered their lethal concoction to prison inmates, who then introduced the disease into the general population. In case you're wondering, Segal has since been accused of being a Soviet disinformation agent.

Similarly, the aptly named Boyd E. Graves (who calls himself a doctor although he has only a law degree) has postulated that scientists in the employ of the U.S. Special Virus Program modified Visna to create HIV during the 1970s. The government, with help from pharmaceutical company Merck, added the virus to an experimental hepatitis B vaccine, which was given to gay men and blacks in New York and San Francisco.

And then there's Gary Glum, author of Full Disclosure, who fronts the theory that scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor lab in New York engineered HIV, and that the World Health Organization spread the virus under cover of the smallpox eradication program. Glum believes the virus was created to wipe out, or at least control, the black population. (According to a study released in 2005 by the Rand Corp., more than one-quarter of African-Americans believe the disease was engineered in a government lab, and 16 percent think it was created to control the black population.)

The article goes on (briefly) to list other double-dumbass AIDS conspiracy theories.

Obama's Minister: Hillary Ain't Never Been Called A N-Word

Hillary isn't the only one being embarrassed by her supporters. Barack Obama's camp is distancing themselves from this sermon by Obama's former minister Jeremiah Wright, who compares Obama to Jesus. This sermon was recorded in December, but has just surfaced on YouTube.

Obama's campaign says of Wright: "Sen. Obama has said before that he profoundly disagrees with some of the statements and positions of Rev. Wright… Sen. Obama deplores divisive statements, whether they come from his supporters, the supporters of his opponent, talk radio or anywhere else."