{"id":426,"date":"2008-10-31T15:00:23","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html"},"modified":"2008-10-31T15:00:23","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T15:00:23","slug":"in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Republican Trust PAC is spending $2.5 million to run this anti-Obama ad in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/I3IAjphhw6E&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/I3IAjphhw6E&#038;color1=0xb1b1b1&#038;color2=0xcfcfcf&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object>John McCain had made a point of saying he wouldn&#8217;t raise Wright, specifically chastising the North Carolina Republican Party for running a similar ad.So, McCain can no longer claim the high road on this.  He stopped an earlier campaign on Wright, and hasn&#8217;t stopped this one.But I have a contrarian view on this:  seems to me that Jeremiah Wright is a far more legitimate attack against Obama than Bill Ayers, teaching sex to kindergartners, Obama&#8217;s &#8220;socialism,&#8221; or many other issues they&#8217;ve used.  I&#8217;ve never understood why Wright was off limits but the others were legit.   I think summarizing the entirety of Wright&#8217;s message as &#8220;hate&#8221; isn&#8217;t fair but, let&#8217;s be honest, compared to what they&#8217;ve got on Bill Ayers, the anti-Wright material is rock solid.Having said that, to run these ads <em>now<\/em> may not be politically wise.  The last month seems to have taught us that voters view ads like these as a sign that a candidate doesn&#8217;t care sufficiently about the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Republican Trust PAC is spending $2.5 million to run this anti-Obama ad in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.John McCain had made a point of saying he wouldn&#8217;t raise Wright, specifically chastising the North Carolina Republican Party for running a similar ad.So, McCain can no longer claim the high road on this. He stopped an&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The National Republican Trust PAC is spending $2.5 million to run this anti-Obama ad in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.John McCain had made a point of saying he wouldn&#8217;t raise Wright, specifically chastising the North Carolina Republican Party for running a similar ad.So, McCain can no longer claim the high road on this. He stopped an&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-31T15:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad - Steven Waldman","og_description":"The National Republican Trust PAC is spending $2.5 million to run this anti-Obama ad in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.John McCain had made a point of saying he wouldn&#8217;t raise Wright, specifically chastising the North Carolina Republican Party for running a similar ad.So, McCain can no longer claim the high road on this. He stopped an&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-10-31T15:00:23+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html","name":"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-31T15:00:23+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-31T15:00:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/in-defense-of-the-antiobama-je.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In Defense of the Anti-Obama Jeremiah Wright Ad"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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