ABC News has dug up more video of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Most Controversial Sermons, including one from 2003 in which Wright says this about the plight of blacks in the United States:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

ABC elicted this somewhat curious response from the Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

[T]here are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn’t detract from Sen. Obama’s affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done.

That doesn’t attract from Obama’s affection for the man described as his spirititual advisor now that Wright’s retired? Come again? Sure, the Obama camp has to remind the news media that Wright recently stepped down after a long career, hoping it will mitigate the fallout from his remarks. But Burton makes it sound like Obama’s affection for Wright is predicated on his retirement, and that if he was still delivering such incendiary sermons, Obama might have to disown him, or at least distance himself from Wright.
This strikes God-o-Meter as a canard. Obama was a public figure, either in the Illinois legislature or the U.S. Senate, for years as Wright delivered his controversial sermons. He had years to lose his affection for Wright but never did. For Obama to imply that he would do so now if Wright was still in the pulpit is disingenuous.

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