Well, even after Bosnia-gate, the Rebb'n Wright story still seems to have legs. In fact, after watching Hillary do the classic "but what about Barack's garbage?" maneuver yesterday, I'm more convinced than even that the party faithful will ask her to step down unless she wins PA in a landslide. At some point, it has to become obvious that she's not just doing damage to Barack, but to the entire Democratic Party. Somebody wake Howard Dean up.
The more I've thought about and watched Reverend Wright's sermons, as well as read about him, the more convinced I am that this is a good guy whom they just happened to catch on the wrong day, and hang with the wrong soundbytes. Hell, I'll be honest, in my 30 some years of being in and around the black church (including my current home), I've heard some things (many of which I agree with, some of which I don't) that would make Reverend Wright blush.
The problem with this whole debacle is that it illuminates White America's unwillingness to acknowledge that black folks just might see this country a bit differently. Centuries of enslavement, Jim Crow, Tuskegee Experiments, redlining, George Bush, Katrina, and T-Pain's vocoder tend to have that effect on people. If you surveyed 1,000 black folks (which not surprisingly, no media outlet has done), you'd find that most of us don't consider Wright's comments un-American and unpatriotic (never mind the fact that he's an ex-Marine), mainly because we have a very different definition of patriotism. And it doesn't mean wearing a lapel pin and singing Lee Greenwood songs.
But like I said when this story broke (two whole weeks ago, damn, it's still being talked about half a month later. A 7 year old sermon.), none of that matters. All that matters is 15-20 second soundbites of a black man talking very loud and very angrily. And if that's enough to derail a history making event like the Obama candidacy, then man, we are all up the creek.
Like my pastor said this past Sunday, "If any of ya'll have kids who might run for President one day, you need to find another church right now!"
Sad, but apparently so true. And is it just me, or does anyone else think it's odd that out of 30+ years leading this church and preaching 4+ times a week, this is all they could possibly dig up? That, to me at least, suggests that just maybe Rebb'n Wright doesn't go hard like this every week. I'm just sayin'.
Anyways, for the sake of context, here's an expanded look at the Wright sermon. There are more of these all over YouTube if you wanna piece together the whole thing for yourself. This video shows the full sermon, and provides a lot more context than those 10 second soundbytes being tossed around. Do yourself a favor and watch in it's entirety.
I guess Reverend Wright must not be that bad peoples, or Slick Willie wouldn't have invited him to that infamous "post-Monica" prayer breakfast (see above photo). No wonder Hillary was so mum on this whole thing last week. Of course, when pressed about her own garbage yesterday, she finally brought this up. But did any cable talking head bother mentioning said photo? Of course not.
[Editor's Note: It's times like these when it becomes to bitterly obvious that we need our own black cable news station, or at least some nightly show. You've got an historic election in progress, and watching some nightly show with your PoV would be nice. But TVOne is playing Divorce Court reruns (the ones with Mablean) and BET is just being BET as usual. What a waste! How hard would it be for one of these stations to have a 1/2 hour live nightly show when they discussed the daily developments with a panel of talking heads? It would be literally free since all you need to do is build a set and hire a host. Man, I should be a programming director somewhere.]
Between that photo and this one of the infamous slumlord Rezko, it seems like Billary and Barry have crossed paths more than anyone's letting on.
Things that make you go "hmmmmmm"...
Question: Does hearing Rev. Wright's sermon in it's entirety change any of your perceptions of him?
Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces [NY Times]
