Stephanie's Journal - A Trinity Church Blog First Posted the Clinton/Wright Photo Six Hours Before the NYT Did

The photo was first posted at 3:00 this afternoon on a Trinity member's blog. Ben Smith picked it up from that site and posted it at Politico at 7:50 p.m. The Times did not post it until 9:00 p.m. So regardless of whether the Obama campaign gave it to the Times, the photo was already out there well before that. Is the Times' snarkiness perhaps due to the fact that they were not the first to get the photo?

http://truthabouttrinity.blogspot.com/2008...

Thursday, March 20, 2008
My Pastor Has Represented Us Well

Friday September 11, 1998 in honor of Religious Leaders.....

He's always been such the statesmen!
Pastor Wright was invited to the White House TWICE! This man is a true patriot and a powerful minister of the gospel.

Posted by truthToPower at 2:56 PM 0 comments
Labels: Clinton, Jeremiah Wright, Trinity

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/030...

Jeremiah Wright was White House guest

The recent coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright has often cast him as a marginal, almost fringe figure, but Trinity Church is a major Chicago institution, and Wright has long been a prominent pastor on the American scene.

And an anonymous blog set up to defend his church offers some compelling photographic evidence of this: A photograph of Wright and President Clinton, which it says was taken on September 11, 1998 -- the date of a White House gathering for religious leaders.

{UPDATE: The blog seems to have taken that item down; here's the full image that was posted.}

Hillary Clinton, according to her recently-released schedule for the day, was present at the gathering. Al Gore also appears in the picture.

By Ben Smith 07:49 PM

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03... /

March 20, 2008, 8:54 pm
Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces
By Kate Phillips

During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.

Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided today by the Obama campaign. Mr. Wright’s relationship with Senator Barack Obama, as his longtime pastor, has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent days because of incendiary excerpts of sermons Mr. Wright gave at their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago.

In providing the photograph to The New York Times, the Obama campaign appeared to be trying to divert some attention to the Clintons after a week in which Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright has left him facing one of the biggest challenges of his campaign.