Obama rejects pastor

Obama rejects pastor in latest Church flap



WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Friday faced new questions over his Chicago church, after video emerged of a pastor mocking his rival Hillary Clinton with racially tinged rhetoric.


Obama rejected the remarks by Father Michael Pfleger, made in the same pulpit at Trinity United Church of Christ as inflammatory sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which pitched the campaign into turmoil earlier this year.

In a guest appearance at the church Sunday, Pfleger mocked Clinton for appearing to cry days before the New Hampshire primary in January, saying she was on the verge of tears because "there is a black man stealing my show."

"She always thought, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife, I'm white and this is mine,' Pfleger said in the dramatic sermon, which now has 100,000 hits on YouTube.

"And then out of nowhere came him, Barack Obama. And she said: 'Damn, where did you come from? I'm white, I'm entitled, there's a black man stealing my show!'"

"She wasn't the only one crying, there was a whole lot of white people crying," said Pfleger, a white Catholic priest.

Obama, seeking to quell the controversy that could provide ammunition to Republican critics, quickly rejected Pfleger's rhetoric in a statement Thursday night.

"As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us," he said.

"That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

It was unclear how deeply the new drama would damage Obama's campaign as he stands on the verge of capturing the Democratic nomination, with the last two primary votes on Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota.

Videos of Wright earlier this year claiming AIDS was a racist government plot and suggesting black citizens sing "God Damn America" to protest their treatment by whites threw his campaign into major damage control mode.

The Illinois senator initially declined to reject the pastor, using the row to make a wider comment about race in America in a speech in March.

Later, however, he later rejected Wright after a round of media appearances by the pastor reignited the affair.