Pastor at Obama's church says Hillary felt white entitlement

Sen. Barack Obama sought Thursday night to extinguish a burgeoning controversy over another Chicago minister who supports him, denouncing the comments of a Catholic priest who said "a whole lot of white people [are] crying" because a black man was within reach of the Democratic presidential nomination.

The remarks by the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a white minister known as "Chicago's renegade priest" for his liberal social activism in the city's black community, came from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, the same church where sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright came under scrutiny from critics who called them anti-American and racially divisive.

Pfleger, pastor of predominantly black St. Sabina's Catholic Church, who fiercely defended Wright even as Obama eventually rejected his support, sounded similar themes Sunday in a guest sermon at Wright's church.

Saying he was seeking to "expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head," Pfleger mocked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for appearing to weep at a campaign appearance before the New Hampshire primary in January, saying she was crying because "there's a black man stealing my show."

"She always thought, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife, I'm white and this is mine,'" Pfleger said in his fiery sermon.

As the racially mixed congregation responded "Amen!" and "Yes, sir!" Pfleger pretended to cry and shouted: "And then out of nowhere came him, Barack Obama. And she said: '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 said. "There was a whole a lot of white people crying!"

Then, sensing that he may have gone too far, Pfleger added: "I'm sorry. I don't want to get you in any more trouble. The live streaming [video] just went out again."

All sides respond
After conservative commentators and Fox News Channel latched onto Pfleger's remarks, which received wide circulation on YouTube and conservative political blogs, Obama released a statement late Thursday repudiating the priest, who resigned from the campaign's pastoral advisory committee several months ago.

"As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us," he said. "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 in common cause."

Pfleger issued a separate apology Thursday, saying his remarks were "inconsistent with Sen. Barack Obama's life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them."

Clinton's chief spokesman Howard Wolfson decried the remarks and called for Obama to further distance himself from them:

"Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together and have no place at the pulpit or in our politics," Wolfson said late Thursday. "We are disappointed that Senator Obama didn't specifically reject Father's Pflegler's despicable comments about Senator Clinton, and assume he will do so."

By Alex Johnson of msnbc.com and Mary Ann Ahern of NBC station WMAQ of Chicago.

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[mrbilingual]

Yo, idiot par excellance, a white man is talking about white stupidity not a black. It hurts you so much that you have to attack blacks. Get over it, for the truth is the truth!!! Your ancestors are trash just like you. They did not have money to pay for toilet paper to wipe their butts. Your ancestors were the dregs of soceity, being the robbers, prostitutes, beggars, incestors, and the trash of Europe. You did not get here in royalty. Africa had no poverty before the white man!!

[blove5000]

God Bless Father Pleger for speaking the truth.

[abukamoon]

@Machetazo1 Maybe you should run for office too. You seem to know all about Divide and Conquer.

[Machetazo1]

@abukamoon Hatred? That's LOVE, muthafucka! XD So what is love, being white and staying out of a black church and continuing to preach the eurocentric master narrative? It's hatred that there even has to BE a "white" this and "black" that in this colony, and it's slow and hateful that the ones who made it that way are the ones that you "americans" can''t seem to stop worshiping and instead dissolve their structure even into today... Shameless.

[Machetazo1]

So a white man honest enough to speak the truth is somehow hateful and race baiting?How about the TRUTH he is speaking of and the reality it represents is HATEFUL AND ESTABLISHED BY 400 YEARS OF RACE BAITING?Everyone knows it, Natives know it, African "americans" know it, Hiapanics know it, Pacific Islanders know it, "australian" aborignes know it, Asians know it, Arabs know it,Persians know it, good white people know it, the only ones that seemed to have not caught on are slow racist whites...

[DougDaCosta]

Pleger sounds exactly like one of those phoney TV preachers. I wonder who pays him and how much money he makes?

[OldWriter205]

@mrbilingual U.R. right. The more sensible liberals see a guy like Fleger, the more likely it is that they might change their vote. And conservatives will feel empowered to take an ever stronger stand in the next elections aganst Obama and his crew.

[abukamoon]

This clown is just a race-baiting self promoter. He ought to get rid of the collar and run for office. He is a born politician. He knows how to fire up a crowd and use hatred to control people.

[ajstill03]

i dont hate every white person. UNDERSTANDING and KNOWING what was done just makes us have to pray harder to love one another. They hated jesus who are we to not expect hate. We should love and forgive because your forefathers dont have to answer for u in the end u do. Love the sinner but hate the sin.

[ajstill03]

God is love not hate. Where in the fruit of the spirit does this sermon fit in. But I agree that the forefathers were wrong by indocrinating the willie lynch speech and blaming the crime and separation on blacks when they aplified it using greed, lust and jealousy. Demasculinating men and installing unsecurity in women. Eurocentalizing history omitting any black achievement not making the frontpage and givingthe award to undeserving whites and capitalizing on stolen black ideas and inventions.