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Putting Jeremiah Wright In Context |
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| There's some historical precedent for Obama's controversial pastor's remarks | ||
 by Daniel Koffler, March 21, 2008 |
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Two more appalling statements from Jeremiah Wright. Here is how he describes the Fourth of July:
[Y]our celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Got that? A nation of savages. Small wonder Obama won't wear an American flag lapel pin. And here is Wright's disgraceful theological pretense for his Chomskyite anti-Americanism:
God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war...And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place...[God will say], "If you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."
So the "hateful" rhetoric was hardly out of the ordinary for Wright. Obama must have heard it, or something like it, and continued going to church at Trinity. He should probably quit the race now, right? Except that the first remark is from a Frederick Douglass speech in 1852, and the second from a Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon in 1968.
Now that Douglass and King have been anointed saints in our civil religion, it's
Frederick Douglass: One-dimensional bigot (just look at the text) uncouth, to put it mildly, to speak ill of either of them. But if statements such as these --- and needless to say, there are plenty more where they came from --- were actually Jeremiah Wright's and preserved on celluloid, can anyone sincerely doubt they'd have made it into the media carnival this past weekend? That Fox News hosts would have worked themselves up to sexual satisfaction that much more quickly with the added material for their feedback loop? That Roger L. Simon would have squeezed out a couple more stanzas about how he wouldn't have personally given black people the right to vote if he knew Obama would attend church with such a psychopath? That Charles Krauthammer would have gleefully made use of the extra grist with which to excoriate Obama for "expos[ing] [his] children to...vitriolic divisiveness"? That enterprising radio talk show hosts and McCain staffers would have spliced such damaging goods into their two-minute hate already featuring cameos by Malcolm X and protesting black Olympic athletes?
How much conceptual space is there, really, between thundering "God damn America for killing innocent people" and ventriloquizing a promise from God to "break the backbone of your power," between declaring America guilty of "practices more shocking and bloody" than any other country on earth and framing the 9/11 attacks as "chickens coming home to roost"? And which remark from each pair would count as more "incendiary" under the standards Wright --- but never, under any circumstances, his counterparts in the white evangelical community --- is being judged?
By the same token, we need not suspend judgment about how the Krauthammers of
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Hated America (it's there in black and white) King's and Douglass's generations would have responded to justified angry black rhetoric even in the contexts of slavery and segregation, since we know how they did respond. In the wake of the church bombings in Birmingham, National Review warned darkly that "it now appears that Birmingham's Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free." As late as 1964, the flagship rag of the conservative movement bitterly inveighed against "the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement' --- that is, the Negro revolt." (This is just scratching the surface.)
The vast majority of those who presently decry "chickens coming home to roost" rhetoric as instrinsically a form of hate speech have concluded on those grounds alone that Wright is a hatemonger with whom no decent person could ever be associated. Would the same crowd have watched King or Douglass denouncing the US in even stronger terms, and then taken a nuanced, holistic view of their lives and deeds? Please.
Barack Obama diagnosed Jeremiah Wright's errors with surgical precision:
[H]e spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Of course, the contexts in which Douglass and King spoke and wrote were very different from Wright's: slavery and pervasive legalized persecution, respectively. That discrepancy is what's objectionable about Wright's remarks. On the other hand, Wright lived through the latter experience, and was raised in living memory of the former. Moreover, King's comments were about Vietnam and had nothing to do with racial justice; so the context for them is not relevantly different from the context of Wright's denunciations of American foreign policy.
There is no form of reverse political correctness that requires us to feign ignorance about the reason --- not the justification or excuse, but the reason --- for Wright's antipathies. Or to pretend that the cartoon of Wright, devoid of any context or biography, accurately represents reality.
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Anonymous
And what about Jeremiah Wright's love for Louis Farrakhan? A sentiment shared by his other political advisor and spiritual mentor http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-racist-preacher-linked-...
zbird
When I started reading them, I had no idea they were from Douglas and King. But what kept going through my head was how much they sounded like Isaiah and other prophets.
--Z
Anonymous
Yeah, in 1852 we WERE a nation of savages....we owned slaves. I think we all agree with his statements given the time and place. What year is it now? As for MLK's remarks, they are dramatically more eloquent than Wright's crude demagoguery. If Wright had said this verbatim, I doubt it would have been a huge issue. If this was all he said, it wouldn't have been a major issue. John Kerry felt the same way about the Vietnam war....and also offered a more civilized debate with regards to it.
Wright also said the U.S. invented aids to kill African Americans. How can you rationalize this type of statement? The "chickens coming home to roost" bit is probably the least offensive of his remarks. In my opinion, it is much more offensive to spread conspiratorial disinformation for personal gain -- at least the war statements are based in relative truth.
"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color" --- Wright's statement presumably taken from "AIDS:
USA Home-Made Evil." According to this deranged pamphlet, scientists at a Fort
Detrick, Md., military lab manufactured the disease. Completely unfounded conspiracy nonsense that only serves to perpetuate feelings of victimization in the black community -- Wright's primary modus operandi. King took a vastly different approach as we all know. He empowered, was eloquent, and was, like millions of others, against the Vietnam war.
Anonymous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male
Anonymous
Why not mention this rather than fabricate and invent BS? Yes, the US has a bad history with regards to all of this....But testing 399 patients in this fashion, as deplorable as it were, pales in comparison to the false conspiracy that the US unleashed a global epidemic on the world in the form of AIDS in order to subjugate the black community.
Sorry, Tuskegee does not make the AIDS conspiracy true and it does not give a demagogue a free license to invent infinite propoganda without being taken to task. By your logic....did Germany invent the AIDS virus because of Hitler's medical testing within the concentration camps???
Monosodium glutamate
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[Please see our comments policy -- ed.]
David N. Friedman
Starved for evidence and argument, Daniel now resorts to a trick, using quotes from others to suggest they are from the infamous Rev. Wright--only to admit that they are from others in a radically different context, thereby making the quotes null and void. This is an telling strategy but Obama supporters require desperate moves to save their sinking candidate--down as many as 17% points in the aftermath of the Wright scandal. The reality is that Wright is revealed as a bigot and anti-American and he has close ties with a man positioned to be the next President of the United States. Obama had a chance to explain and defend himself and he chose to take a pass and offer no response--gambling that changing the subject and talking around a subject will appear to be an answer. Having never been on the spot before, this is a poor response and it demonstrates that this man has none of the judgment to be a national leader and his taste for radical politics has the country reeling in disgust.
So we now know that this is a man that runs when in crisis and tries to talk himself out of trouble instead of coming clean. It would have taken very little, in one small way to try to stop the bleeding, to actually say what statements his disagrees with and what statements he agrees with. Instead, he leaves us guessing and under the circumstances, people are now prone to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt since he has always been feared to be anti-American. Now, we have a specific context for what we know about how his mind works and an understanding of those who have influenced this not ready for prime time politico.
It is all too self-defeating for Daniel to drag MLK into this discussion given the fact, from all we know about his stands and character, he would not at all be ready to agree with the radicalism of Wright. King was reflexively pro-Israel and immediately after the unprovoked attack on 9/11--there is no suggestion that King could ever actually support someone who said this the "chickens coming home to roost."
Daniel is completely wrong about Wright. We have heard his party line all before. It is the same stuff that occupies the hard left of American politics, the blame America first crowd the vast majority of Americans strongly reject. It is not fair to bristle over the accusation that Obama shares the sympathies of the unpatriotic left and now we have strong substantiation and not some cartoon version of the truth. The perception that Wright is somehow entitled to his bigotry is a direct insult to the thousands of black Americans who do not share such perceptions. This kind of paternalism is way out of place.
Perhaps what is most striking about Daniel's stand is the arrogance in seeing this kind of scandal in terms of its unfairness and the opinion of so many Americans as supposedly suspect. Obama is not being skewered by his controversial associations, he is being defeated by the confirmation that the suspicions about his true feelings are very valid. It is one thing to hang out with unsavory people, it is quite another to suck from their nipples. The controversy is not ended with all that we now know about pastor Wright--it is the fallout from his failed speech that has him in trouble. Before Daniel runs to Obama's political allies for quotes about what a great speech he gave, perhaps he needs to understand the reason why he needs to convince most of the country that at worst, he is not really way out there. He may have delighted a few of his friends but his speech poured gasoline on the fire of this controversy.
He had a chance to put this whole thing behind him--now it is wrapped around his neck. We want to give him every chance to prove that he is ready to be President--even if we are voting the other way. The Dems owe the country the promise that you might prefer a Republican but our candidate is at worst not such a bad guy.
Sorry. Now that he has spoken we are convinced he is a liar, a radical and a bit of a clown. He is not a candid man and runs away when under fire. As a potential commander in chief, this is the very LAST impression he should want to give the nation and this impression will cost him the election if he is the nominee.
Monosodium glutamate
Obvioulsy Mr Koffler didnt take English at Yale-see what he did to my previous quote. It is applaling that Mr Koffler dendends Jeremiah Wright, who blames Israel for 9/11 and prints Hamas propaganda in his church bulletin. I expect a ringing defense of Hamas and a defense of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva meurders in a future column by Koffler
Daniel Koffler
I took enough English courses to learn how to spell. Well done. Sorry my dendend applaled you. But I've obvioulsy never dendended meurder.
Anonymous
Tuskeegee doesn't make the AIDS conspiracy true. But it helps explain why some groups would have less reason to trust that Uncle Sam would be as ethical as you assume they should when it comes to protecting the health and welfare of African American citizens.
chip_devlin
I will never vote for Obama because I am not racist. Because I refuse to treat black americans like children and excuse behavior we would never tolerate in a white person. Because I will not pat them on the head and say, "It's not your fault. Your failures as a community are all due to the racism of the white man." Wright's word are not acceptable in 2008 America and Obama's association with Wright is not acceptable.
Anonymous
Actually, yeah, what about the other candidate's preachers?
WHAT ABOUT GEORGE W BUSHES INSANE CONNECTIONS TO INSANE PREACHERS
rargh. This is hardly the issue that should be focused on right now.
great article daniel.
Anonymous
You don't have a clue...Within their respective era's the language of both Douglas and King stimulated similar reactions. Language patterns change with time, however the content of Douglass, King, and Wright is strikingly similar. You are reacting to Wright's deliver. The United States did experiment on African American men in Tuskege Alabama in what is known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. So, there is precedent for AIDS/HIV claim, it is not that far-fetched. It is not a victim mentality, it's called speaking truth to power. That's it. That's all.