Posted on 04/29/2008 1:25:50 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WASHINGTON -- Because John McCain and other legislators worry that they are easily corrupted, there are legal limits to the monetary contributions that anyone can make to political candidates. There are, however, no limits to the rhetorical contributions that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can make to McCain's campaign.
Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question arises: Can persons opposed to Barack Obama's candidacy justly make use of Wright's invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The answer is: Certainly, because Wright's paranoias tell us something -- exactly what remains to be explored -- about his 20-year parishioner.
In Monday's speech at the National Press Club, Wright repeated -- decorously, by his standards, but clearly -- his accusation, made the Sunday after 9/11, that America got what it deserved. His Monday answer to a question about that accusation was: "Whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap" and "you cannot do terrorism on other people and expect them never to come back on you."
As evidence that "our government is capable of doing anything," he strongly hinted that he has intellectually respectable corroboration -- he mentioned several publications -- for his original charge that the U.S. government is guilty of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." But on Monday he insisted that he is not anti-American: It is, he said, Americans' government, not the American public, that is a genocidal perpetrator of terrorism. So, he now denies that America has a representative government -- that it represents the public. He believes that elections constantly and mysteriously -- and against the public's will -- produce a genocidal, terroristic government.
On Monday, Wright also espoused the racialist doctrine that blacks have "different" learning styles than do others. This doctrine of racially different brains, or of an unalterably different black culture, is a doctrine today used to justify various soft bigotries of low expectations regarding blacks, and especially black children. It has a long pedigree as a rationalization for injustices. Slaveholders and, later, segregationists loved it.
Obama should be questioned about whether he agrees about "different" learning styles. It is, however, predictable that journalistic and political choruses will attempt to suppress such questioning by suggesting that it is somehow illegitimate. The "daisy ad" and "Willie Horton" will be darkly mentioned.
There have been two television ads in presidential campaigns concerning which there is a settled consensus of deep disapproval. In both cases, the consensus about these acts of supposed mischief is mistaken.
The first ad was used in 1964 by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater: A small girl plucked petals from a daisy as a voice counted down to a nuclear explosion. The ad, reflecting Johnson's fear that his large lead would cause complacency among his supporters, concluded with a voice saying: "The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
Goldwater and many of his supporters were incensed. But Goldwater had said several things suggestive of a somewhat cavalier attitude about the use of force, including nuclear weapons. He had made his judgment a legitimate issue.
In the spring of 1988, in a debate among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore used the matter of Willie Horton against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, one of Gore's rivals. Horton had been in a Massachusetts prison serving a life sentence for the murder of a boy Horton stabbed 19 times during a robbery. Horton was frequently released on weekend furloughs. Finally, he fled, kidnapped a couple, stabbed the man and repeatedly raped the woman. Because the ad, made by supporters of Vice President George Bush, included a photo of Horton, critics called it racist. But supporters of Bush argued that the Horton episode was emblematic of Massachusetts' political culture, or of a liberal mentality, pertinent to assessing Dukakis.
When North Carolina Republicans recently ran an ad featuring Wright in full cry, McCain mounted his high horse, from which he rarely dismounts, and demanded that the ad be withdrawn. The North Carolinians properly refused. Wright is relevant.
He is a demagogue with whom Obama has had a voluntary 20-year relationship that implies, if not moral approval, certainly no serious disapproval. Wright also is an ongoing fountain of anti-American and, properly understood, anti-black rubbish. His Monday speech demonstrated that he wants to be a central figure in this presidential campaign. He should be.
Did the Reverend actually try to provide an opportunity for Obama to have his Sister Souljah moment by denouncing him? Obama doesn’t seem to say anything so far... perhaps because he really doesn’t see anything wrong with his ‘former’ pastor.
I wasn't gonna ask, but evidently they did some “soul searching” and the sign disappeared. Their neighbors and I found the missing sign episode amusing, to say the least. We did figure that, if they have a sign this early, they must have donated a hefty amount to Obama already. Bet they don't donate any more!
George Will gets it right.
Bring it on.
As far as I’m concerned, Barack is an Obamanation. BWA HA HA HA HA HAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Eventually, you can find how much they donated at fundrace.org.
In the beginning of Obama's career he needed Wright or someone like him to help him build a political power base. Unfortunately for him what was available was a race pimp Rev.
Now Obama pays the price. Obama should make a formal break with Wright's Church. His relations with him are poisoned anyway and only the strongest repudiation has any chance of helping Obama's campaign. It would be crazy to think Obama can go back to cordial relations with Wright after all this. He really has nothing to go back to.
The Obamanation of Desolation, perhaps?
I wish someone would publically ask Obama to deny that he will support black reparations if elected.
One answer will cost him millions of white votes, and the other, millions of black votes.
b. HUSSEIN’S church chickens....coming home to roost!!!
b. HUSSEIN and his anti-american wife have NEVER been prouder to be Americans!!!
Is that a hint?
Wright gave Obama no option but to Sister Souljah him.
Whether it was his intention or not, who knows.
Rev. Wright and Jim Jones are the same sick person.
Another scurrilous right wing attack on the Black Church! Everyone knows that the Rev. Monica ministered to Bill. I can prove that the Rev. Wright wasn't even there!
BTW, The Rev. Wright is a "typical" "inner city" Big Black Church preacher. Some are much further out than he. To judge from the way he has torpedoed Algonquin J. Obama, his true vocation in another time and place, would have been as a U-Boat commander.
Torpedos ....LOS!
"Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question arises: Can persons opposed to Barack Obama's candidacy justly make use of Wright's invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The answer is: Certainly, because Wright's paranoias tell us something -- exactly what remains to be explored -- about his 20-year parishioner."
There was a debate a number of years ago in First Things, I think, about Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and that should be part of this debate over Rev. Wright because this is not really about race but bad theology and the liberal politics connected with that. There have been some great discussions on Wright, faith and politics on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Rev. Eugene Rivers, on FOX with Megyn Kelly, Michael Steele, the former Lt. Governor of Maryland, and Angela McGlowan. Quite amazing actually, bringing forward black Christian leaders talking about these issues.
It's too bad Bill Buckley is gone. They could have had a great debate on faith and politics on Firing Line with Michael Steele, J.C. Watts, Alan Keyes, Rev. Eugene Rivers, and Cornel West. The discussions and debates should continue. They just need to take the controversy over theology and focus it back on Christianity. Someone should organize this.
Add to that Obama's comments about the bitterness of Americans clinging to guns and religion in small towns, elitist ideas perhaps influenced by Richard Hodstadter's Paranoid Style and "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt" or Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas. It's the two things together - Wright's wacky theology and Obama's elitist attitudes about small-town Americans clinging to guns and religion - which calls into question the wisdom of a President Obama in the White House in 2008.
People like Rev. Wright make it much easier for Typical white people like me to not feel at all guilty about 200 years ago.
It has become increasingly apparant that Barrack and his pastor want seperate but unequal rights for black people.
All whites are the same. right brained bad people that need to have all their assets given to black left brained people. Just because.
If these statements had been made by a white preacher - he would be behind bars for a hate crime.
This man doesn’t want equal rights for all people he wants extinction of white people.
If Rev. Wright had only kept his mouth shut for a couple of more weeks and let Obama dispose of Hillary once and for all, then we wouldn't have to deal with her in the Fall.
Obama, with his self-destructive ways and American-hating friends, might have been easily defeated by McCain in November.
If Hillary is the nominee, McCain will let her walk all over him.
George got that right.
I doubt Obama loses North Carolina.
25% black and a huge Gen X an Echo Boomer population ..
The Dems can't afford to let this happen, no matter what the Rev says. Blacks would perceive this as whites stealing the election. There would be a Reginald-Denny style bloodbath, and blacks would stay home in November. Their resentment could even result in a third-party movement.
Thanks! What a great story that I hope is repeated all over the country!
This is the horrible conundrum with which the Democratic superdelegates are faced: Either cast their lot with a fatally flawed candidate, in order to mollify their African-American base (and young people, to the extent that they can be expected to actually vote in November); or give the nomination to Hillary instead--despite her enormous negatives with the general public--and hope that the civil war that would surely erupt within the Democratic Party will (somehow) not result in John McCain's triumph in the fall.
Truly, the superdelegates are being impaled on the horns of the proverbial dilemma.
Well, nice of George to be a Good Republicans this time
If B. Hussein O.looses then Wright can go back to his screeching about the underclass blacks not having a chance in Whitey's Amurika. The money and prestige continues to roll in.If B. Hussein O. should be elected all the sermons will be moot. I put my nickel on him wanting Obama to loose.
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