Which Rev. Wright Was Joe Biden Really Talking About?

On Thursday, we reported that Vice President Joe Biden, while addressing the NAACP Annual Convention, gave a special shout-out to a "Reverend Wright."

In an apparent effort to bond with the crowd, Biden mentioned "the men and women who educated me when we‘d sit over in Reverend Wright’s church as we’re talking about desegregating the Rialto and the Queen movie theater."

Several outlets, including The Blaze, Fox Nation and Drudge as well as Michelle Malkin's website picked up the story, assuming the vice president was referring to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose association to President Obama has been well documented and followed.

Since then, Media Matters and other left-leaning sources like Salon and Daily Kos and have attacked the "conservative media" for falsely claiming that Biden was referring to that Rev. Wright, when it was clearly a different Rev. Wright from Delaware, where Biden spent much of his career.

From Media Matters:

A spokesperson from the Obama campaign told Salon's Joan Walsh and The Washington Post's Greg Sargent that Biden "was referencing a different Reverend Wright ...an old friend from Delaware."

Biden's camp has yet to respond to multiple calls left by The Blaze seeking clarification on the vice president's comments or make an official statement debunking the story.

Granted, we may have jumped the gun a bit, but what was Biden thinking when he mentioned a Rev. Wright without providing a first name or trying in any way to clarify who exactly he was referring to in his NAACP speech?

Even the so-called "explanation" given by the anonymous Obama campaign spokesperson to Walsh and the Washington Post was vague and did not state which Rev. Wright in Deleware Biden was speaking of -- just that it wasn't the Rev. Wright that the Obama campaign has been trying so hard to distance itself from.

Calls made by The Blaze turned up only one Rev. Wright in Wilmington so far, and he is episcopalian not Roman Catholic like Biden. Additionally, a spokeswoman with the Episcopalian Diocese of Wilmington said Rev. Wayne Right was the head of a New Orleans parish up until 10 years ago.

According to a spokesman with the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Biden was a member of the St. Joseph's on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in Greenville, Del. So far, no word from Biden's hometown church about whether any Rev. Wright ever worked there but none are currently listed on the church website.

Still, after further review, the odds he was really talking about Jeremiah Wright are slim at best.

Why? First off, Biden, 69, talks about the desegregation of the Rialto and Queen movie theater in his address. A Google search confirms the existence of both a Rialto and Queen movie theater in Wilmington, Del., where Biden reportedly spent much of his early career as a public defender.

Desegregation occurred throughout the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement, when Jeremiah Wright, 70, would've only been in his mid-to-late 20s.

The timeline just doesn't add up.

Jeremiah Wright graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia circa 1959 before attending Virginia Union College in Richmond. He went on to join the Marine Corps sometime around 1961 and after two years of service, transferred to the U.S. Navy and entered the Corpsman School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Jeremiah Wright then attended the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland -- and that's the closest he gets to Wilmington, about two hours away.

He continued his education, receiving his bachelors and masters degrees from Howard University, a second master's degree from University of Chicago Divinity School and a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

Jeremiah Wright didn't even become a pastor until 1972 when he joined the United Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago. This is where he met President Obama, who started attending in 1988 then abruptly severed ties with the church in 2008 during his presidential campaign.

Biden may very well know another Reverend Wright from Delaware or maybe it was a freudian slip as he was going over the list of names in his head that he wasn't supposed to mention.

Either way, the vice president would be best advised to steer clear of mentioning any "Reverend Wright" in the future.