The Mad Rants of an Unconventional Soccer Mom

We are all aware of Rev. Wright and his incendiary comments. For the last few weeks the Wright controversy has undoubtedly weakened Obama. I’ve already expressed my views of the whole Wright situation. I can’t say that I was happy with his performance at the National Press Club; he knew he was hurting Obama. I’ve read on a few sites that he did it to intentionally throw himself under the bus so that Obama would find it easy to completely disavow him. I don’t think so. I think his ego and his anger got the best of him.

Bill Moyer, who interviewed Wright for a whole hour on PBS last week, has decided to weigh in on it and here is what he makes out of the whole situation:

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person -- uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.

~snip

But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of a preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

~snip

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the
price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt,
who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".

So when will all the white Preachers repudiate the terrible things that they have said?

Thank you Mr. Moyers for speaking the truth and pointing out the double standard. It is about race. Billy Graham, Jerry Farwell, Parsley, Coe, and Hagee should not be given a pass because they are white, nor should the politicians like McCain or Clinton be given a pass by the press when they used Rev. Wright as a racist tool to divide people. Neither of these two politicians cares about the damage and the division that they are inciting. And that is what is unforgivable to me and in my estimation, is not Presidential.

A President leads by example, and both McCain and Clinton had the opportunity to lead with dignity, intelligence, fairness and grace. Instead we were able to see them for who they really are as individuals who care only about getting elected and whose last thought is about the people and the country that they lead.