Former NYC Mayor doesn't buy Obama's latest explanation

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch has a column filled with recent Obama quotes condemning his former close friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright's hatreds and what Obama used to call "snippets."

Koch provides more of Obama's Wright-condemnations of in one column than any Obama-supporting pundit I read.

But Koch also points out that for all of Obama's recent condemnations:

He has not explained why he sat in the church's pews for 20 years without complaint.

Koch continues:

Do voters accept his explanation on Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" on May 4th, when he said: "Well, you know, previously, there were a bunch of sermons that had been spliced from a collection of sermons for 30 years. And that's not who I thought he was. That's not what I thought defined him. He's somebody who's a Marine, he's somebody who has served on city colleges boards, somebody who was a respected pillar in the community. And so I thought it was important to--for him to explain or at least provide some context for some of the things that he had said previously.

"But when he came out at the press conference of the National Press Club, not only did he amplify some of those comments and defend them vigorously, but he added to it. He put gasoline on the fire. And what that told me was not only was he interested in using this platform to continue to make statements that I fundamentally disagree with and that offend me, but also that he didn't have much regard for the moment that we're in right now here in the United States where we can't be distracted or engaged in this divisive, hateful language."

Or, do voters believe, as some do, including me, that Obama cut his ties with Wright because of Wright's attack on Senator Obama in which he made clear that Senator Obama, in his opinion, was like every other politician, a hypocrite who is willing to say whatever will get him elected?

Wright said at the National Press Club on April 28th, "We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected. Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors."

The interview with Tim Russert, regrettably, did not touch that area of their disagreement. ...

Koch's entire column is here.

Comments:

No, the interview with Tim Russert "did not touch that area of their disagreement."

Or to put it more precisely, Tim Russert "did not touch that area of their disagreement."

It tells us a lot about MSM's "candy land" treatment of Sen. Obama that almost two months after Wright's racist and anti-American "snippets" began to break through the MSM "filter," Obama has yet to be pressed by the media to the point where he's had to explain how he could not know all those years about Wright's ravings and other activities.