I can’t believe the MSM has spent all this air time on a pastor who isn’t running for president. Oh, OK, yes I can. Since Obama “divorced” Wright in the press conference yesterday, my question is whether the bar for the media will move even higher. His former pastor’s ego was obviously bruised from the (quite frankly, sensitive) rebuke of his past comments that he received from the presidential hopeful in Obama’s A More Perfect Union speech.
Some of what Wright said at the National Press Club was clarifying and on point:
Maybe this dialogue on race, an honest dialogue that does not engage in denial or superficial platitudes, maybe this dialogue on race can move the people of faith in this country from various stages of alienation and marginalization to the exciting possibility of reconciliation.Other parts added nothing positive to the dialogue showed a public unraveling of the id. Wright felt dissed, and took it before the cameras, damaging his own credibility — and he either doesn’t seem to realize it — or care.
I see clips from the NPC appearance and wonder what’s next — Rev. Wright lobbying for additional 15 minutes of exposure to “play the dozens” with Barack Obama? I’m sure the media would be down with that too. And that’s because they never dig deeper to see what’s really beneath the surface.
Wright’s litany of grievances — including a perceived attack on the black church, the conspiracy theories about the government and 9/11, or inflicting AIDS on blacks (referencing the Tuskegee experiment) — reveal a very real thread of beliefs in a segment of the black community of a certain generation who lived under the thumb of Jim Crow and in-your-face bluntly institutionalized white privilege.
Making light of this kind of thinking diminishes the fact that it comes from an element of truth, and that white privilege, though not as boldly naked as in generations past, is alive and well. It also illuminates the lack of black cultural competence in the dominant culture. This is exemplified by those disturbed by Wright’s earlier remarks (and delivery) in the first place — and generated the fear of what I call the Secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda entering the White House through the vessel of the pleasant, benign Barack Obama. You could read between the lines in the commentary — people were musing, wondering how prevalent is Wright’s belief - the bizarre mix of fact and fiction — in the black community.
This is all crazy making? Not really. Our desperate need to discuss race honestly and openly (and SANELY), is not simply a difficult exercise. Remember, we have people who will not vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances because he is black. No one wants to really discuss those conservative white blue collar workers who fall into this category — the current demo prized by Senator Clinton. They see a “Rev. Wright eruption” and automatically see the Secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda. In Appalachia, George Packer found people who just laid it on the line. (h/t, DHinMI)
After [McCain’s] speech, I left the county courthouse and crossed the main street to talk to a small group of demonstrators holding signs next to McCain’s campaign bus. J. K. Patrick, a retired state employee from a neighboring county, wore a button on his shirt that said “Hillary: Smart Choice.”There are a whole lot of people who will never fess up. We just don’t know how many, and the MSM (and progressive bloggers) seem to have little interest in exploring this.“East of Lexington she’ll carry seventy per cent of the primary vote,” he said. Kentucky votes on May 20. “She could win the general election in Kentucky.” I asked about Obama. “Obama couldn’t win.”
Why not?
“Race,” Patrick said matter-of-factly. “I’ve talked to people—a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.
Why not?
“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”
What about race?
“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.
…Everyone knows that race is a factor in Obama’s low vote among older whites, though reporters say that no one will admit it personally. In Eastern Kentucky, people (and not just J. K. Patrick) admit it personally, without hesitation or apology.
Why do you think the Republicans and the NC GOP used that trial balloon ad featuring Wright in a six-degrees of separation between him, Obama, and gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore? Because the dog-whistle works. And that’s why it has to be called out.
***
Does this mean Obama is unelectable? No. What it does mean is that there is a segment of the population, some vocal, some not, who will not be moved because their bias is not challenged in a productive way. Why? Well, because, it’s hard work. Addressing this country’s problem with race is too much work for many people, because it is so vast. But we are so close - witness Obama’s success so far — he is winning this race despite the implicit and explicit biases out there.
That, friends, is why this race is playing out the way it has — the conventional wisdom and the political power structure (including the MSM) is being challenged to acknowledge the existence of white privilege within their spheres and the culture at large, and these institutions are just as much in denial as most of the country. I’m not surprised that Rev. Wright’s 15 minutes of dreadful, illuminating fame has provided them with comfort food.
Perhaps Barack Obama can put this behind him now.
My last two cents — all of this mess with Wright (and Hagee) just goes to show you why campaigning with your faith on your sleeve (or in McCain’s case, just sucking up to a fundie for votes), is dangerous, mine-laden territory. I don’t care who your pastor is — he or she isn’t doing the 3AM wake up call or sending military personnel to die for our country, or appointing the next Supreme Court justice.
Let’s get back to the real tasks at hand, since Dear Leader is going to leave us a helluva mess to clean up.
***
When I posted this over at my pad, someone pointed out the kid gloves treatment religious figures like Pat Robertson or John Hagee receive, and this was my response:
The folks sitting in the talking head chairs and at the newsroom computers typing up their screeds about Wright and how far Obama’s apology should or shouldn’t have gone are just as much a problem as some of Wright’s comments for the reasons you stated.
The undercurrent of media reaction during this whole controversy has been about a undefined “discomfort zone” re: cultural blackness that had been crossed and the MSM, along with others who feel similarly, want it shut down pronto by Obama.
That Wright chose to self-immolate at the same time out of ego before the very white privileged media he charged with bias and taking things out of context pretty much indicates his mission was personal.
And then he threw gas on the fire with the additional conspiracy nonsense and set off the media hand-wringing and pontificating again.
Obama in the end did the right thing, and it’s clear that for him, the severing of the relationship with Wright — and with it the positive aspects of it — was painful for him even as it is necessary on a few levels. It should have been given the circumstances, because Wright’s negativity has been something completely absent from Obama’s outlook throughout this campaign.
The fact that so many, out of implicit bias, immediately attempt to hold individual blacks for the acts/words of another — collective blame assignment and responsibility to explain it — is something the LGBT community should identify with all too well. For Obama, the fact is Wright had a personal connection to him as his former pastor, only ratcheting up the Trojan Horse fear factor. I think Obama was schooled on this to some degree, which is why it took some time for him to digest and respond to what we’ve seen unfold.
How many times have we seen homophobic legislators/fundies work to pass laws preventing us from access to rights the rest of society takes for granted based on the acts or perceived acts of some small segment or individuals in our community who they can point to as the “other” and demonize? It doesn’t make an entire community responsible for defending or refuting that person’s choice or statement, but it often has to be done to also mollify the dominant community’s fears. That’s the part that receives zero analysis.
That’s why it takes something monstrously egregious to get the MSM to criticize someone like Pat Robertson or John Hagee — there is a second issue — the undeclared layer of racial discomfort in the case of Wright — that doesn’t exist for them, so Crazy Pat can easily be dismissed.
Boy, are we messed up on these issues. It’s fascinating to see it out there in all its spectacular craptitude, but the media, which holds so much sway, time after time misses the opportunity to actually get to the heart of the matter by avoiding the analysis of the cultural and racial undercurrents involved.
31 Responses to “Rev. Wright: 15 minutes of illuminating fame”
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If Wright doesn’t get a nice, well-known white man like Pat Robertson to sign on as his Veep, his candidancy is toast.
Wait- what?
Well, you’ll note that Senator Obama basically told the Rev Dr Wright to please just STFU.
Surely even a huge Obama supporter like yourself must be wondering why someone like Dr Wright would be trying to sabotage the Obama candidacy.
Yesterday on “Your Call,” a call-in show on one of SF’s NPR stations, KALW, the guest was Michael Eric Dyson. He was talking about his new book, about Dr. King’s death, and how we knowledge that he was probably going to be killed shaped his life.
He talked about similarities between what Wright and King believed in, and how they chose to speak that truth, and noted that in black crowds, King was often as condemnatory and as prophetic as Wright is. He also talked about the similarities between LBJ and Dr. King and Wright and Obama. (I think he overestimates the effect King had on LBJ’s decision to drop out of the 1968 primary race, but it’s his book and bully pulpit, not mine.)
The program is now archived as a podcast by now, and is well worth listening to.
Dana, did you read the post? It’s right there in the first paragraph:
Surely even a huge Obama supporter like yourself must be wondering why someone like Dr Wright would be trying to sabotage the Obama candidacy.
Did I not make that clear above? Obviously we’re dealing with the personal slight/ego, but Obama’s candidacy with its approach to moving beyond the traditional dialogue (that includes framing within the comfort zone of wary whites), in Wright’s mind, represents a a cop out, a suspicion of sleeping-with-the enemy that will undermine those blacks without a voice.
Obama knows that in order to succeed, he will piss off both the (conscious and unaware) guardians of white privilege, as well as a segment of the black community still playing out the past traumas of the civil rights movement in today’s framework. Thus the early arguments over whether he was “black enough”. Now he has to deal with whites aroused by Wright, questioning whether Obama is culturally white enough and not an Angry Black Man. Witness the cover of the NY Daily News today.
That he has done so well in spite of such a narrow cultural and racial band within which to operate in our country says a lot about the man.
Dana, also, the incomparable Digby has some thoughtful comments about the Obama-Wright dynamic, as well, if you’re genuinely interested in what seems to be going on here.
However, to put it bluntly, this is pretty much just a pissing contest writ large being played out in the media. Wright, who regards himself as the “leader” is trying to remind Obama, whom he regards as the “lesser,” who’s really the alpha dog. It’s gotta be tough when the parishioner of the most famous man in the South Side of Chicago becomes the most famous man in America. It’s a classic Oedipal struggle going on here.
I look forward to Obama doing his part to move us past the rhetoric of old. The race problems of today cannot be discussed as long as the race problems of yesterday (and their talkers) dominate all discussion of race. This isn’t to say that Wright, Farrakhan, Sharpton, Jackson and others don’t have something valuable to contribute, but I hear them and it’s often like it came out of the same canister of film footage as a George Wallace rally or some firehosed marchers.
I am under no illusion that Obama will end racism, convince racists of their stupidity, or anything like that. But I am very glad that his campaign is shining a light on the stupid cockroaches among us who categorically refuse to consider blacks to be full citizens, human beings, or otherwise worth considering on their merits.
I don’t know what else Obama can do or say at this point. He’s filed for divorce. The ongoing problem for him will be the 20 years and tens of thousands of dollars he gave to Wright. Obama decided to quit him yesterday because he was embarrassed, but I find it hard to believe that Wright is the one who has changed. He’s been saying the same things the whole time, but now the country is listening and it sounds pretty bad.
If someone spent 20 years in the Klan, they’d still have problems if they gave a press conference and quit on the spot. Obama’s problems with Rev. Wright aren’t going anywhere except up on 527 ads in the general election.
“If someone spent 20 years in the Klan, they’d still have problems if they gave a press conference and quit on the spot.”
Thanks seroj!
I was really worried that this discussion wasn’t going to get dumb enough to be really interesting. Thanks god you came along and lowered us down a few more notches by trying to seriously compare one man’s membership in a Christian church with being a member of The Klan.
Now all we need are some good comparisons of Obama and Fascism and some comments about Obama wanting to “rape de white womens” and the discussion will be complete…
Last i checked, Rev. Wright didn’t have any pledged delegates. Obama is running against McCain and Clinton at the same time, right now. This race is as close to a three-party system as we’re going to get. And yet, we now have to throw a *religious* figure into the national media to make sure that he really, really earns it. Most black people realize that they have to work harder to get as far as white people in this society, so it’s not a surprise that Obama now has a third opponent in this race.
Rev. Wright is clearly trying to ride the hobby-horse of fame as long as he can. Frankly given the craven, idiot behavior of the media, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years, Wright regularly appears as the official media representative of blacks.
I still waiting for the media to start covering some of McCain’s whack-job spiritual advisers. Of course that will never happen because
a. Good, old-fashioned, white, male bigotry is totally cool if you say Jeebus often enough.
b. No Democrat has spliced a video for the media to use and reporters would have to do that themselves.
c. McCain is a “maverick”, which apparently means that he’s always good.
Most of what Wright said is spot-on. Only the government-gave-black-folks-AIDS routine is unhinged. Hell, even the guy’s anger is perfectly rational — however, it did lead to a few irrational, hateful statements. The guy’s more like Malcolm X than MLK.
I agree this is a tempest in a teapot, and a gravy train for a lazy MSM; but OTOH, but it’s hardly surprising that giving thousands to a man who can be seen declaiming “God damn America” might prove a liability in any future political career. Our national political life is defined by soundbites, and has been for some time.
As for me, my support for Obama hasn’t flagged one iota. (An iota is the standard measure of magnitude for a flag.)
compare one man’s membership in a Christian church with being a member of The Klan.
The Klan * is * a Christian sect. That’s the problem. White supremacist fundamentalists get to keep their religion. Regular middle-class black people don’t. That’s a fundamental inequality in our society.
It’s now time for the Rise of the House of Clinton and the Collapse of the False Hope of Obama. I’d suggest that people join the real revolution over at the The Clintonista Post
The Catholic church has been saying the same thing for 50 years, yet people in the pews do change their minds about its stance on many issues over time. And some pastors out there are fantastic people in real life but scary as hell when talking from the pulpit: which one of them is the real person, the 1 hour on Sundays or the 167 other hours in the week?
Personally, I think Obama found faith somewhere along the way. The real faith of the gospel that is, the one that doesn’t need miracles to sustain belief but rather the faith that sees goodness everywhere and seeks to bring all people closer to it because we can be better people with enough sincere humility. That kind of faith is transcendent, and I’ve seen very few people who have consciously chosen to go there.
Dana April 30, 2008 at 6:32 am
Well, you’ll note that Senator Obama basically told the Rev Dr Wright to please just STFU.
This should have happened earlier. Obviously Obama thinks he can’t throw Wright under the bus and think he can manage the outrage. But he couldn’t completely take out the slow burn. With that, Obama gets continuous nipping that erodes whatever message he tries to bring out.
(I personally this is a drama, Obama ask Wright to do something outrageous so he can dissociate, and move on. GOP will pull the same trick anyway. )
Hillary Clinton controls a lot of media asset btw.
Wow those Clintons are powerful! First 20 years ago they snookered Obama into joining Wright’s church. Then they somehow got him to go there for two decades, probably through hypnosis. Then when Obama was running for President they had a mole in Obama’s campaign that kept the campaign from dealing with this 18 months ago. And then they somehow knew to wait until after Super Tuesday to get the message out because they knew Obama would cruise until then. And then their mole got Obama to speak in such a way to not distance himself from Wright but still say enough to piss Wright off. so Wright would go on a press tour. And the Clintons then convinced the press that thinks Hillary is a shrewish bitch to do their bidding.
I mean its either that or Obama screwed the pooch on what was obviously going to come out and hurt him.
“It’s now time for the Rise of the House of Clinton and the Collapse of the False Hope of Obama.”
Riiggghhhhtttt…
The only thing Senator Clinton hasn’t done yet to become more like John “100-Years In Iraq” McCain is have plastic surgery.
As usual, if you want a Rethug, why vote for the fake version when the real thing is available…
For those of us who are not evangelical, I find the expectation that we should expect a patriotism-fest from the pulpit to be fairly unusual.
Personally, I feel that, as a Christian, it’s pretty much impossible for a serious pastor to praise the United States, outside of a biblical, “pay your taxes, pay proper respect to the institutions of secular leadership.”
Those expressing outrage at pastor wright are either not that religious, are put off with the loud, over-dramatic african-american preaching style, or are simply lying about their own outrage to cover up for the fact that their pastor inveighs against the “American holocaust of abortion” every week and don’t want to have to answer for their own pastors.
Ultimately, one hears nothing but praise for African American pastors within Republican circles if they are sufficiently anti-gay and endeavor to ingratiate themselves with the institutions of power when they are courted by Republicans. Wright does neither, which is probably one of the reasons Obama liked him in the first place.
Anyway, as I pointed out at MattY’s blog, since the Drudge report has nothing about this on his page, I can only assume that Drudge’s main audience — lazy reporters and loudmouthed, cranky Republican uncles — considers the story dead.
Only the government-gave-black-folks-AIDS routine is unhinged.
It’s not so much unhinged as obviously wrong now that we know certain things about HIV/AIDS. This is an idea that probably seemed entirely possible 20+ years ago when very little was known about what caused AIDS and what the full ramifications of the disease were. Heck, for a while in the early 80’s a majority of scientists thought it was caused by inhalant drug use.
That Wright continues to believe and/or preach the belief that this could be true is an example of his overall obsolescence, but taken in context it’s not pathological or anything.
That’s the meme, all right: Obama isn’t a nice, safe black man like Martin Luther King Jr. — he’s a Scary Angry Black Man like Malcolm X who’s just faking being nice.
And, yes, you may have specified Rev. Wright, but it’s the Obama = Malcolm X comparison that came up repeatedly in places like the comments for Jake Tapper’s column about the Press Club appearance.
(Where, incidentally, I noticed that my comment from yesterday that Tapper should be embarrassed that he claims that it’s a “mystery” who Wright was referring to with the chickens coming home to roost remark when both MSNBC.com and CNN.com have reported who it was — Edward Peck — seems to be MIA. Interesting.)
Gawd.
Martin Luther King said that the white man had lost his morality. I’m having trouble imagining this not being torn to shreds in today’s media.
I think Obama made a mistake in letting the media scenario overtake him. He hurt the guy’s feelings by making it more than just, “Oh, I disagree with him saying that, but you don’t storm out of church just because your pastor said something you disagree with. Going to church is about a lot more than just sermons.” He made it too personal, and Wright felt thoroughly insulted. Now he’s a loose cannon.
Hey Pam — they’ve identified the group doing the messed up robocalls in NC. They’re a DC non-profit called Women’s Voices Women Vote, ostensibly devoted to getting unmarried women to vote. Largely, however, they have a man’s voice make robocalls to African American voters and give them misleading or incorrect voting information. Most telling? The Executive Director of this group a pollster for Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign. John Podesta, Clinton’s former COS is a board member. The president of the group has maxed out to Clinton in this cycle. They have a very sleazy history in mucking with voter registration and the like in far more states than NC and VA.
I think this is a very revealing comment. It has its parallel in men/MRAs who think feminism means women abusing men and really puts the lie to the idea that blacks and women aren’t oppressed. Folks who think like that will claim that fill-in-the-blank group really aren’t that oppressed, but their fear that, if given power, that group will turn around and treat them the same way shows deep down they understand this is not a just situation.
I must be good at being torn, because I am torn so frequently. Maybe I’m a regenerating roll of paper towels and can be torn ad infinitum.
But… I don’t think Wright was upset by Obama’s handling of the situation. I think he was clear that he felt that Obama was going to have to play the political game.
I do think that he was sick and tired of being called a bigot and anti-Semite and to have preached nothing but hatred for 20 years.
I’ve seen people pull out the tired old bullshit claim, “you might call it a few mistakes; I see it as a time when the mask slips and we see the real man”. And I’ve seen constant claims that Obama was “exposing his family” to constant bigotry, as if the cherry-picked soundbites of Wright’s sermons were the totality of his preaching career.
If this kind of crap was being said about me, I’d be furious, and I still have enough faith in this country that I just might think I can set them straight. I’d be wrong, of course, but I’d still have to give it a shot.
I blogged about this myself, but there’s a large part of this that I can’t quite get out right. I keep coming back to a quote by Maurice Maeterlinck, about how, during the Inquisition, the careful, moderate position was that we mustn’t burn *too many* heretics, and it was only the crazy radicals that said we shouldn’t be burning heretics at all.
I think we need those “crazy radicals” who challenge the status quo with ideas we don’t want to think about. I think we need them especially when their churches are feeding the hungry, helping the homeless, helping folks with education, etc..
And part of me hoped that Obama would have been able to pull this off. “I don’t respect him because he’s perfect; I hate that he says these things. But I do respect him for the good he’s done.”
White supremacists don’t get to run for president.
A lot of what Wright said is pretty ordinary lefty rhetoric that Obama still has to flee from. I personally disagree with the argument that US foreign policy in some way justified Sept. 11, but it’s not a radical or new assertion. It’s definitely toxic to a candidate trying to forge a governing coalition, though.
There’s nothing Wright said that precludes him from being a power broker in Chicago politics, and nothing that would cause a candidate to hesitate in accepting, or even courting his endorsement. But Obama worshipped in his church for twenty years, and that raises the question of whether the candidate shares the beliefs the pastor espouses.
Clergy can deliver votes, and their endorsements are important, and that’s probably more true for Republicans than Democrats.
But you don’t see people who worship congregations like Hagee’s actually getting elected as governors, senators or presidents. That’s too much baggage, even in the Republican party.
Robertson and Falwell lost a lot of political capital making statements similar to Wright’s “reap what you sow” rhetoric. They still deliver votes and money, so they still get in the door, and they still generate controversy and eyeballs, so they can still get on cable news, but politicians keep a distance from Robertson now, to avoid the stink rubbing off.
When Falwell died, Republican officials ducked his funeral.
Just a nutcase holding a Hillary sign in Kentucky. Whoever wins, it will be by assembling a coalition of the dumb-as-Hell. Whether they vote because they’re racist or they vote for the taller candidate, or because of windsurfing or swift boats, or they vote for who their pastor tells them God likes, millions of voters will make poorly considered decisions and choose their candidate for stupid reasons.
A third of Americans don’t finish high school. They’re not going to be able to weigh the pros and cons and come to a rational conclusion about whose health care plan is the best. Heck, if they even cared that much about health, they wouldn’t be blackening their lungs cigarettes, pickling their livers with cheap domestic beer, and stuffing Big-Macs.
This is why slugging Crown Royal, why generalized rhetorical nonsense, transparently manipulative campaign ads and inspirational YouTube videos get you further than meticulous, carefully considered policy proposals. There are probably as many Democrats for Obama who don’t want a woman president as there are Democrats for Hillary who don’t want a black, and some Democrats will probably defect to McCain for that reason. And all of them will take those bigoted votes, because you don’t win elections by throwing votes back.
A third of Americans don’t finish high school.
Considering that only like 40% of Americans are registered to vote, how many of these folks do you think actually vote.
Well, if Obama’s supporters defense strategy is to complain about the media, we might as well pack up our bags and stop wasting our time and resources on this election business.
That said, I get the feeling that The Rev. Wright’s race patriotism is fake. I doubt the well-educated Rev. believes his own conspiracy theory about AIDS. His pandering to black anger and frustration seems to have made himself quite wealthy. Maybe someone should ask the Rev to open up his financial records, we already know he owns a mansion in an affluent suburb.
And I just want to add that The Rev.’s comrade and college buddy out here in the bay area is a dim bulb by the name of Rev. Amos Brown. The guy was a complete shill for business interests when he got appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he mainly focused on things like taking away shopping carts from homeless people (try google).
This is my problem, and has been from the beginning, with Obama: his attempts to really push and promote the post-everything mentality. Post-race, post-partisan, post-divisiveness.
It was a VERY narrow tightrope he walked, with the possibility of achieving something startlingly new surrounded by the much-more-likely possibility that he’d fall and there’d be no net.
In his attempt to be all to all, he left himself open to this very controversy?
Fair? Hardly. Should he have seen it coming? Hell yes. And I’m shocked and amazed if he didn’t go to Wright before his original speech/rebuke and work all of that out beforehand, especially given that the two ARE supposed to be so close. The fact that Wright seems to know and acknowledge how much of a wedge he is says to me that he doesn’t really care what he does to Obama.
The funny flip side to that is, it sounds as if Wright would want that scary-to-whites “Angry Black Man” as president and he’s all but come out and said that Obama is not that man.