Among the many casualties of this corrosive primary season is nuance.
There are three accepted positions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
- He has nothing to apologize for. Everything Wright says is right-on.
- Once in a while, he says something a little overboard, but think of it as reparations for (or as repercussions of) racism.
- He hates America, and anyone who would be associated with him does, too.
Obama has chosen door #2.
On the race-related topics, I agree with Obama (at least as far as the Wright clips I’ve heard so far are concerned). For a dissenting opinion, see Michael Meyers (executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP), who would like slavery to be a forgotten memory. I share Meyers’s disdain for separatism and manipulative ministers, and his goal of a truly equal future, but the notion that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow doesn’t and shouldn’t haunt us today seems to me wishful thinking at best. Here, I think Obama is spot on, in suggesting we regard both the progress America has made on race and that indelible legacy.
The problem is, Wright’s most repellent statements had nothing to do with race. Thus, Obama’s vaunted speech this week was yet another exploitation of race under the guise of “healing.”
One could argue that this is “good politics.” But it’s bad statesmanship to exploit racial tensions to obscure the real problems with Obama’s sometimes-offensive “uncle.”
What does race have to do with Wright’s thoughtless “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” sermon on the Sunday after the twin towers fell? Nearly three thousand innocents — among them a rainbow of ethnicities and nationalities — had just been murdered, and Wright makes religio-political hay out of it, just as Falwell and Robertson did. Shame on all of them.
Criticize U.S. policy all you want (I certainly do) and seek to understand and address the root causes of anti-Americanism (ditto). But terrorism is not karma. It’s murder, especially when practiced by a millionaire who has greatly benefited from the support of the country he demonizes and attacks.
And did slavery and Jim Crow necessitate the vulgarity of “Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was ridin’ dirty,” as Wright campaigned for Obama in front of God and everybody?
This brings us to the broader question, of why we privilege these houses of the holy, so often homes to haters, blowhards, and charlatans. Why do we give them tax-free status and so damned much deference?
And shouldn’t our church-and-statedar start beeping loudly when we hear Obama say he’d told his heartwarming “Ashley” story, about why people support his campaign, at Ebenezer Baptist Church, on the occasion of Dr. King’s birthday? Putting aside whether you find campaigning then and there an exploitation of a true-life martyr (whose life is one of the best arguments for reverence for reverends), is this mixture of church and personal political gain kosher?
With Obama’s late-in-life conversion to Wright’s church, as with other convenient moves of his, I’m more favorably inclined toward him when I believe it to be a con job than sincerity.
But don’t con me on race, on terrorism, and on politicking from the pulpit. ’Cause that shit’s not cool.
Obviously, admitting that religion is a big con was off the table. Every politician not named Pete Stark plays that game (or would have to, if they ever found themselves with a “faith” deficit).
Would that it weren’t so, because Obama might have said: “Look, I adopted this church as a social and political convenience, as does everyone else. Wright says some bold things about race that are more painfully true than we all wish they were. And sometimes he’s a big, unjustifiable, jerk. But no one complains, because we accept it as a cost of racial and neighborhood solidarity. The same thing probably goes on, in its own way, in your church, mosque, or synagogue. Wake me when people are allowed to talk honestly about religion, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the first one.”
Of course, I understand that it’s unrealistic to expect that. But one keeps hearing of the power of hope, dreams, and change, so forgive me if I indulge.
And forgive me if I’m not impressed when someone pretends to take the high road on race while using it as a smokescreen. Nor am I impressed when, in the very speech where he decried playing the race card with Geraldine Ferraro’s statements, he played the race card with Geraldine Ferraro’s statements.
Front page
What about the hypocrisy
of giving that speech then sending a picture of Bill Clinton shaking hands with Rev. Wright to the media?
Obama: Worst Defense Lawyer Ever
One of the problems for Wright’s Church is that Obama is not going to be a good defender. I thought he did a good job in his speech defending his church, in the paragraphs where he put Wright’s remarks in context, but ultimately he’s going to be a lousy defender. He’s too much a politician, which is understandable, but more than that he’s a politician who had already poisoned the well. Setting aside how difficult the issues of race or religion are in this country (let alone a mixture of the two), there was a lot of existing, growing resentment of Team Obama’s casual smear of racism at nearly any criticism. It was good politics while it lasted (at least for Obama, I’m less convinced about Democrats), but it was never going to last. There was bound to be a backlash because 1) surprisingly a large number of voters don’t like to be called racists or have folks they like called racists, and 2) as you all have pointed out here, Obama doesn’t come close to meeting the standards he laid out in his own speech. Wright gives Americans a chance to do one of the things they love to do which is get up on their high horse about hypocrisy even as they themselves are hypocrites.
I expect more of a backlash. These things are very difficult to control. With so many Obama supporters now essentially using the Wright effect on Obama’s poll numbers to label every non-Obama person a racist, that isn’t going to make Obama more loved, I suspect.
And while I’m sure there is some racism driving it, I think that alone is too simple an explanation. I’m sure just as many, if not more, people have been turned off by Wright’s non-racial statements regarding America and Hillary. But there’s also the issue of his rudeness, for lack of a better term. He may shout “god damn” in church as a way to break through his listeners protected ears and get attention or as some other speaking trick, but if my experience as a child in Indiana and Kentucky is any indication, many folks are going to find that in itself shocking and offensive. Politeness and non-confrontation were the rules around my neighborhoods, even when people strongly disagreed. That’s a cultural thing, which is connected to race, but not limited to it since I have white friends who grew up with everyone shouting profanity at each other and black friends who would be shocked that anyone said God Damn in church.
"Late in life"?
Another work of art, this essay. Thank you.
One teeny-tiny quibble.
In Obama’s round of interviews last Friday, he placed his coming to Wright’s church around ’91 or ’92, when he would have been 30 or 31 years of age. (Notice how he was in the Church for 20 years before he was in it for 17? But I digress.)
Is it really unusual for a highly educated, mobile professional with no children to not “settle” on a Church while only in his 20s? Seems to me that just the act of moving to a new state is going to force a change in that area, whether you’re truly devout or a snake-oil salesman or anywhere in between.
My point, I guess, is that citing his alliance/conversion as coming “late-in-life” is a bit like empty rhetorical calories. Tasty, but not really taking you anywhere. But I feel petty to point it out, given such a great and thoughtful entry. Thanks.
Innocent bystanders are in relatively short supply...
… so charges of “hypocrisy” don’t impress me much.
What it looks like to me is:
1. The Obama campaign lost its magic touch, and now they’re flailing, because:
2. The “____ was photographed with” ploy is very, very old, and:
3. For those who follow these things, Obama already personally blamed the Clinton campaign for releasing the Muslim garb photo, which Kevin Drum admits turned out to be a Drudge smear, so Obama’s record on photos isn’t so good, and I don’t see why he’d want to remind people who follow this stuff about that, and:
4. Honestly, who cares? If Wright’s a good guy, as Obama claims, how does a photo of Hillary with him hurt Hillary, except to show that she’s got ties in the black community, too (duh!). And if Wright should be thrown under a bus, how in the name of sweet suffering Jeebus does a photo outweigh a twenty-year association? I mean, did Wright baptize Chelsea, like he did the Obama kids?
Now, since the photo of Hillary was taken at the National Prayer Breakfast, it does suck, ’cause those guys are loons, and she’s definitely in “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas” mode. But the malign influence of religion on politics is not the conversation on offer in this case, sadly.
Great post, VL. I remember using “Stuck pig squeals” in a comment head over at The Obama 527 Formerly Known As Daily Kos, and being called racist for that. It’s more than rough elbows, because the charge, if it sticks, is career and brand destroying.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Photo Isn't Even of Hillary, It's of Bill
At least from what I could see. So basically, in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton invites a large number of ministers from across the country for a “prayer breakfast.” Wright was there in the background (Clinton wasn’t even talking to him in the photo I’ve seen) and that’s it.
A deeply weird and desperate move by the Obama campaign. Their internals must be tanking or their hearing bad things from SDs because this maneuver is lame on its face and is likely to give the press reason to still cover the controversy.
Tony, I would say that's unusually late in life...
… to “find religion.”
We’re seeing that people are considerably more mobile in their religious affiliations than they used to be, but especially among people as educated as Obama, going from skeptic to adherent is, AFAIK, relatively unusual. It’s not without precedent, and much is made of conversions like C.S. Lewis’s and Anthony Flew’s (until the truth came out about that, well, actually even after it did), but relative to the standard of childhood indoctrination, I have no qualms at all about characterizing it as “late-in-life.”
And thanks for your kind words for the rest of it.
MSNBC showed Wright and Bill C. embracing
MSNBC coverage showed a photo from the Fall 1998 get-together with Wright and Bill Clinton embracing, standing in front of a full room.
In a sane world, a photo-op at the National Prayer Breakfast is slightly different from a pastor you got married by and whose church you attended for 17 years, but you know - IOKIYO (It’s Okay if you’re Obama).
Working the Body
IOKIYO is only going to work on MSNBC. This story isn’t going away. McClatchy today has a front pager on some of the “provocative doctrines” of Obama’s church. Here’s the opening paragraphs of the story:
Now, I don’t doubt that’s written in as incendiary way as possible, and the rest of the article puts it into more context, but I don’t think we can count on responsible journalism to pull a Democratic politician - even a media darling - through, do you? Or expect it on the twin issues of race and religion?
Because I’m paranoid, I’ve already lost interest in Wright and am trying to see where this is leading because the GOP always has a plan. My guess is that all of this is body work, weakening Obama for the next blow, the potential knock out - William Ayers.
Now, it seems to me that Ayers isn’t incredibly close to Obama and under normal circumstances it would be difficult to hold Obama responsible for Ayers’ beliefs, much less his actions decades ago. But that little logic problem is more easily glossed over if you’ve already used something and someone incredibly close to Obama - his pastor and church - to paint him as some sort of anti-American, extremist, black radical. And ultimately, I think that is where all this is leading, Barack Hussein Obama, friend to terrorists. Because Wright is about “just words”, but Ayers can be painted as where those words lead.
It’s ridiculous, of course, to think that Obama supports any kind of radical agenda, much less violent acts, indeed my problems with him are that he’s too cautious, too centric even when compared to Hillary Clinton (which is saying something), but when did things like truth or reason ever stop the GOP slime machine? This is going to get really ugly. So ugly, I might eventually have to rouse myself from my exhaustion from defending Clinton from Obama’s toxic use of racism and sexism, to defend Obama. Because while I don’t want to see him as the nominee this year, I also don’t really want to see a big name democrat destroyed. Again.
I do have one lingering question which is why now? I’m pretty sure the GOP want to run against Obama in November instead of Hillary so why start this up now rather than September? Did they believe the MSM that Clinton is dead? Or were they hoping to keep it under the radar with a soft drumbeat on their outlets, but the MSM got bored in the down time waiting on Pennsylvania and picked it up now? Have they lost control of their own smear?
Anglachel
Another take on the Wright problem for Obama, http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/03/i…
Knockout coming...
I’ve thought about the same thing, BDBlue. Besides the joy of seeing us disorganized and crazed, why didn’t they hold their ammunition?
One possible, yet convoluted, answer is to help create civil war within our party for the GE.
In other words, drive Hillary’s numbers up by hitting BO, then the SD’s will feel compelled to pick her, and the AA’s will walk out of the convention and sit out the election.
Plus, I don’t for a minute believe they aren’t holding the elephant gun in reserve.
can’t say that we didn’t warn them about the GOP machine (well, they can say it but it won’t be true).
They must have some really bad stuff on hold-my imagination is too disgusting now to even repeat some possibilities. But, the OFB
I don't think they have a pick per se
What the Village is about is, first, lopping off our options at either end of the spectrum — both Edwards and Ron Paul for example (and Wright is the same thing). Huckabee too, though Huckabee was probably running for whatever office Pat Robertson holds, as I think BIO was the first to point out.
Our spectrum having been reduced to the those most acceptable to the Village, they are now weakening all of them as much as they can. The Village is all about being a permanent government, so any nominee needs to be whacked.
That said, I think they’d prefer, marginally, someone who owes them; and that can only be Obama. Sigh.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.