Now the left is seeing through the Rev. Wright facade. Joan Walsh of Salon.com is over him. She makes an excellent point about the "sound bite" defense and Wright:
My goal in this post is to try not to treat Wright the way Wright seems to treat the idea of America; to not utterly damn Wright because some of (a lot of? I'm not sure) what Wright has said is disturbing and wrong. I am grateful to Bill Moyers for airing so much of the sermons. I enjoyed their thoughtful conversation about theology and politics. But the whole idea that Wright has been attacked over "sound bites," and if Americans saw his entire sermons, in context, they'd feel differently, now seems ludicrous. The long clips Moyers played only confirm what was broadcast in the snippets (and the longer excerpts out today are even more troubling)...
...The long excerpt from Wright's Sept. 16, 2001, sermon was maybe the most disturbing. He compared al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden to African slaves who led slave rebellions in the U.S. He linked the 9/11 hijackers with every decent kind of global freedom-fighter. He linked the killing of American civilians on 9/11 to Americans killing civilians from the Indians to Hiroshima to Bill Clinton's bombing of Sudan to retaliate against al-Qaida in 1998. I deplore all of those civilian killings as well, but 9/11 was indefensible. And to the extent that American foreign policy has played a role in the rise of al-Qaida, and it certainly has, anyone who wasn't a tone-deaf, tin-eared lefty opportunist looking for any chance to push their "analysis" of American evil knew that 9/16 wasn't the time to talk about it persuasively. Watching Wright defend his 9/16 speech to Moyers I thought to myself, what's the problem here? Wright clearly believes the chickens were indeed coming home to roost on 9/11. What part of that does he think people don't understand?
The Moyer interview was weak, but the clips did help tell the story. He has followed up the last two days in his "coming back out party" and is looking worse and worse. This man is not helpful to the cause of racial reconciliation. Nothing he says is good for my interracial marriage or my biracial children. He is doing nothing to truly get to solutions. Walsh says:
And I'm on the left. I know huge chunks of it are true. But Wright casts his critique in such an extreme way that the possibility of redemption, the evidence that America can and has and will change for the better, is never considered. (It should be noted that Obama agreed with me on that point in his March 18 speech about Wright and race.) Wright preaches a deadly kind of "blame America" politics that many on the left have tried to move away from since the '70s. And it could be especially deadly for Obama. He was supposed to be a continuation of our evolution toward promise and opportunity and optimism -- but his pastor is a guy who says "God damn America"? Who seems to feel vindicated by "the chickens coming home to roost" after 9/11?
I am starting to agree with some people who think Wright wants Obama to lose. Because he can then point to a mean, racist, country and continue his tirade. We need solutions to racial tension. We need hearts and minds to be changed. Wright's theology and political conspiracy theories are not going to do that.
I'm going to be glad when he is finally out of the news. In my opinion, and it means little because I am on the other side of the color divide, he is destructive.
Link: Joan Walsh - Salon.com.
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