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"We have a choice in this country," argued Obama, addressing the YouTube e-mailers and the cable news networks. "We can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can play Rev Wright's sermons on every channel every day. We can do that but if we do I can tell you that in the next election we will be talking about some other distraction and then another one and then another one and nothing will change." CBS anchor Katie Couric called the address "the most difficult, risky and important speech of his political career." ABC anchor Charles Gibson called it "extraordinary" and speculated that "it may turn out to be the seminal speech of his Presidential campaign. NBC anchor Brian Williams observed that in this year's campaign race is "inescapable."
Most of the straight reporting on the speech consisted of extended soundbites: ABC's Jake Tapper included five paragraph-length clips; NBC's Lee Cowan also used five; CBS' Byron Pitts four. Pitts included Obama's reminder that the "resentments of white America" cannot be dismissed as "misguided or even racist." Tapper focused on Obama's criticism of the Rev Wright as expressing "a profoundly distorted view" of the United States as endemically racist and his "profound mistake" of treating race relations in society as static. Cowan expected the speech he called "expansive" and "intensely personal" to be discussed for the remainder of the campaign. Yet he cautioned: "This kind of speech takes a little while to percolate down to the electorate so it could be some time before anyone can say for sure whether the Senator did what he had to do."
The analysis split into three themes: assessing Obama's overall argument; examining the impact of the speech on the institution of the African-American church; and handicapping its electoral impact.
On NBC, Jonathan Capehart from Washington Post opined thus: "It was a very blunt, very honest, very open speech that really put out into the open the furtive conversations and furtive thoughts on both sides of the racial divide that have been going on for generations." CBS' Jeff Greenfield called it "very effective and uncommonly frank." Refusing to renounce Wright, even though his oft replayed sermon soundbites "were a mortal threat" to Obama's campaign was "an act of honor," judged ABC's George Stephanopoulos.
ABC's Steve Osunsami (embargoed link) played a soundbite from Obama on the discourse of the black church: "It contains, in full, the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and--yes--the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America." On CBS, the Rev Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine observed that "many white Americans would be uncomfortable with what is said often in black churches." ABC's Osunsami observed, tactfully, that black sermons have been understood as "performances of exaggeration--in the words of one black minister gross hyperbole--but certainly with strands of truth." Debra Dickerson of MotherJones.com remarked on CBS about the black tradition that "what happens in church stays in church and I think that is a vestige of racism. Nobody took us seriously. Nobody cared what the colorful ministers were saying." Dickerson predicted that now the Rev Wright's soundbites are appearing all over YouTube "politicized ministers are going to be rereading their sermon notes."
As for the politics of the speech, CBS anchor Couric asked Greenfield flatly whether it put the Wright controversy behind Obama: "No." Greenfield argued that the Rev Wright's canard that the AIDS virus was spread as part of a federal conspiracy was so "bizarre" that Obama will be sabotaged by the association. ABC's Stephanopoulos thought the speech was enough "to reassure the relatively affluent liberals and independents" who already support Obama but he has "a bigger problem with white working class voters." On NBC, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's Morning Joe generalized geographically: "The question is not how we are going to react in Georgetown or Manhattan; it is how they are going to react in Youngstown Ohio, Scranton Pa and Jacksonville Fla. These Reagan Democrats voted for Bill Clinton twice, voted for Ronald Reagan twice, voted for George W Bush twice. There is white resentment there…I think they may not respond quite as well as we respond here."
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