The Untrained Ear

So here’s Barack Obama’s first major written statement on his relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright — and remember, the issue here is not Jeremiah Wright’s statements themselves (though it is easy to see why people would be outraged by them), but rather Barack Obama’s voluntary 20-year relationship with Wright.

While many others were ooo-ing and ahh-ing about Mr. Obama’s genteel refusal to dip to the level of his critics, I was struck by how very conventional his carefully-parsed statement was. It’s something, in other words, that any run-of-the-mill pol would attempt when backed into a corner. Observe:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.

Huh; okay, so first of all he’s limiting his comments to “the statements . . . that are the cause of this controversy.” So he’s dispensing with anything else that Wright might have said. In fact, we still don’t know which exact statements he’s referring to, because he might view only some of those statements that were getting airtime as being the true cause of “the controversy.”

Second, he’s simply saying that with respect to that limited subset of statements, they’re not ones that he “personally heard [Wright] preach while [Obama] sat in the pews of Trinity Church . . . .” So someone could have told Obama about the remarks right after they were made. Or Obama might have personally heard the statements, but not while he was sitting in the pews — he might have been standing up! Or he might have personally heard the statements while he was sitting in the pews — of another church! And when he personally heard the comments, he simply might not have been paying attention.

So this is a conventional politician trick — lard up one’s statements with multiple limiters and disclaimers that people won’t follow when they’re listening to you, and rely on your listeners to read in to your general (limited, disclaimed) theme whatever they would like to believe you’re saying.

But I’m just an untrained ear.