Missing: one wife — Ask the pastor

Can you imagine a self-respecting newspaper going with this item, which I know I am going to pass over in silence:

Delmer Reed has told friends he believed it was no coincidence that his former wife, Ramah, divorced him and married [Rev.] Mr [Jeremiah] Wright shortly after the Chicago pastor gave him advice on their troubled marriage in the early 1980s.

Roosevelt Thomas, a lawyer who handled the Reeds’ divorce in 1983, confirmed to the New York Post that Mr Reed long believed Rev Wright moved in on his wife after counselling them.

Even Bill O’Reilly is drawing the line:

Bill O’Reilly told Kinky Freidman and Juan Williams that he’s tired of the Wright story. This sudden Wright fatigue didn’t stop him from mentioning the New York Post story about Wright stealing the wife of a church member. He even held up the front page so viewers could catch the headline and photo.

For documentation purposes, it started here, wouldn’t you know?  With this:

May 4, 2008 — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama‘s loose cannon of a spiritual adviser, stole the wife of a parishioner – after the man sought Wright’s help in saving his troubled marriage, the former husband told friends.

Delmer Reed, 59, confided to pals that he believed the minister moved in on his wife while Wright was counseling the couple at his Chicago church in the early 1980s, The Post has learned.

“That’s exactly how he said it,” Reed’s divorce lawyer, Roosevelt Thomas, told The Post.

Chicago youth worker Harold Davis backs Reed up.

“Jeremiah knew all the weaknesses of the couple, and he started focusing on the wife, her vulnerabilities, and started doing things she wanted Delmer to do – spending time with her, taking her to the movies, that sort of thing,” said Davis, who heads the Chicago branch of football great Jim Brown’s Amer-I-can youth program.

“Everybody knew Jeremiah took the man’s wife,” said Davis. “It was common knowledge.”

The Wrights deny he ever counselled the woman.  

But a member who chastised Wright for his behavior was denounced from the pulpit:

Activist Derrick Mosley, a self-styled minister who has clashed with Wright, said there’s an “unwritten rule” that pastors don’t counsel married couples separately – as Wright did with Ramah Reed, he said.

In 2003, Mosley said, “I called him on the carpet about the indecorous manner in which he’d obtained his wife.”

In response, said Mosley, “he ranted and raved from the pulpit. He got up and announced, ‘If Derrick Mosley is in the building, I want you all to arrest him.’ “

Wow.  Was Obama there for that sermon?

If it happened.  Let us not trust Mosley too far:

CHICAGO — The Rev. Derrick Mosley, known throughout the Chicago area as a self-proclaimed community advocate, was arrested and charged with wire fraud and extortion Monday in an alleged plot to blackmail the wife of a professional athlete.

NBC5 Image

Mosley is accused of trying to obtain $20,000 from a business manager representing the athlete’s wife, claiming he had a videotape depicting her in a sexual encounter with a musician and another woman, NBC5’s Darren Kramer reported. Sources confirmed the musician on the alleged sex tape was R & B star R. Kelly.

According to NBC5’s sources, the tape pre-dates the woman’s marriage to the unidentified athlete. R. Kelly’s manager said Mosley tried to extort money from him in a separate incident. The R & B artist’s manager filed for a restraining order against Mosley in 2003, NBC5’s Marion Brooks reported.

A tangled web, I’d say