Obama Expresses Outrage Over Former Pastor Jeremiah Wright's Comments

By Michael Saul
Daily News Political Correspondent

Wounded politically, seething over a betrayal by the man who helped bring him to God, Barack Obama denounced the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Tuesday and cast his former pastor from his house.

One day after Wright's defiant and incendiary performance at the National Press Club, Obama assailed his harangues as "appalling," "ridiculous," "outrageous," "insensitive," "destructive" and "divisive."

"Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Rev. Wright has changed as a result of this," Obama declared during a nationally televised news conference from North Carolina. "I do not see that relationship being the same after this."

In a rebuke all the more remarkable because Wright officiated at Obama's marriage, baptized his children and prayed with the Obama family as he launched his White House bid, the Illinois senator said Wright's extremism "contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am."

"Anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign's about, I think, will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country," Obama said.

The painfully public searing of pastor and parishioner - and the raging controversy over Obama's decision to remain a member of Wright's church for the better part of 20 years - comes at a critical time as Obama is scrambling to close the deal on his bid for the Democratic nomination.

The Indiana and North Carolina primaries are next Tuesday.

At Obama's Chicago headquarters, top aides were trying to avoid an internal meltdown over the Wright fallout. "Nobody even wants to talk about it. It's a disaster," said one source, who noted that a usually upbeat headquarters was fighting off its worst morale problem since the primaries began.

Still, some insiders were confident the worst was over now that Obama has driven a stake into Wright's heart. "This came late, but it's clear," one said.

In Monday's remarks, Wright lauded Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a frequent spewer of anti-Semitism, as one of the "most important voices" of modern times; defended his belief that the United States brought the 9/11 terrorist attack on itself, and stood by a theory that a racist U.S. government plot spawned the AIDS epidemic.

"All it was, was a bunch of rants that - that aren't grounded in truth," Obama said. "And, you know, I can't construct something positive out of that."

Obama accused Wright of "giving comfort to those who prey on hate" and engaging in the "exploitation" of racial, religious and regional divisions.

But Obama said he was "particularly angered" by Wright's suggestion that Obama's previous distancing of himself from the pastor's remarks was "somehow political posturing."

On Monday, Wright insisted that Obama merely "distanced himself" from some of his comments out of political necessity.

Obama countered Tuesday, "That's a show of disrespect to me. I don't think that he showed much concern for me. I don't - more importantly - I don't think he showed much concern for what we're trying to do in this campaign."

On March 18, after Wright's inflammatory sermons garnered national attention from widely circulated video excerpts, Obama delivered a major speech on race relations in an attempt to quell the controversy.