Obama’s Inflammatory Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Stays at Ritz-Carlton

From the New York Post:

March 25, 2008 -- BARACK Obama’s inflammatory pastor knows how to relax. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright - who urged his congregation to sing “God Damn America” and opined that the US brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism” - decided not to spend Easter Sunday with his former followers at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side. Instead, the preacher, who retired from his post last month, abandoned his flock for the sunnier climes of Puerto Rico. Our spies caught him lounging in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, where rooms rates start at $399 a night. But while Wright is far from his flock, he’s not far from their minds. His successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, used Sunday’s Easter sermons to compare media focus on Wright to the Romans’ persecution and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Moss said the church will not distance itself from Wright, and that they keep an empty chair in the pulpit in his honor.

If the sourcing on this seems somewhat shaky (“spies”), consider this from a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times:

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

Hmmm. Did Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose incendiary pulpit pitch sent the campaign of congregant Barack Obama into a national tailspin, spend Easter at a posh hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico?

– Was he there? When Sneed called to verify whether Wright, who was not with his flock at the Trinity United Church on Easter Sunday, was staying at the pricey Ritz-Carlton hotel, we were told “Jeremiah Wright has checked out.”

– Good timing? “He left at 5 a.m. this [Tuesday] morning,” said a hotel employee. “He only spent a few days with us . . . and then checked out this morning.”

This comes in the wake of disclosures that Wright’s congregation is building him a 10,000+ square foot house in a gated suburban community in which to live during his retirement.

All of which raises the issue: for Wright, as for Jesse Jackson, is being a militant advocate of a racial agenda simply a good cover for very traditional and venal motives? Is there simply (for some people) more money in being a racist demagogue than in an honest business enterprise?