Obama Adds to Distance From Pastor and Opinions

NYT: Obama Adds to Distance From Pastor and Opinions
By JEFF ZELENY
Published: April 29, 2008

WILMINGTON, N.C. — If it was not clear before Monday, Senator Barack Obama said, it should be clear now: His presidential campaign has no control over what the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his former pastor, says or what he does. “He does not speak for me,” Mr. Obama said. “He does not speak for the campaign. He may make statements in the future that don’t reflect my values or concerns.”

“I think certainly what the last three days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him, right?” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama made his remarks at a hastily called news conference on the tarmac of the airport here late in the day, with the engines of his campaign plane buzzing in the background. His decision to address the issue directly reflected the extent to which Mr. Wright has emerged once again as a problem for his campaign. And at a sensitive time: Mr. Obama has been seeking to appeal to white and blue-collar voters who voted in big numbers for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania, and is trying to persuade uncommitted superdelegates to rally to his side.

But for the third time in four days, Mr. Wright made a high-profile public appearance to discuss and repeat some of his more controversial statements, this time at the National Press Club in Washington. Mr. Wright suggested that the attacks of Sept. 11 were at least in part a response by terrorists to terrorism practiced by the United States abroad. “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you,” he said.

He stood by his suggestion that the United States might have invented H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. He defended the Rev. Louis Farrakhan — whom he referred to at times just by his first name — noting his large appeal among African-Americans....And he suggested that Mr. Obama’s speech in which he distanced himself from some of Mr. Wright’s more controversial remarks was politically motivated. “He had to distance himself,” the pastor said, “because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.”

Mr. Obama’s discomfit was evident during a six-minute news conference during which he repeatedly tried to steer the conversation back to other issues. Mr. Wright was not mentioned — by Mr. Obama or voters — during a town-hall-style meeting on Monday afternoon....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29wright.html?hp