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| Home Front: Politix |
| God bless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright! |
| 2008-04-30 |
| Jonah Goldberg For six weeks, Obama’s supporters have diligently argued that to so much as mention Wright is, in effect, racist. When Hillary Clinton said that Wright wouldn’t have been her pastor, Andrew Sullivan gasped on his Atlantic blog that this was “a new low” in the election. When Lanny J. Davis, Clinton’s consummate spinner, defended her on CNN by describing what Wright actually said, Anderson Cooper lambasted Davis for daring to repeat Wright’s comments. Time’s Joe Klein chimed in, “You’re spreading the poison right now.” Obama and his defenders have insisted that the bits from Wright’s sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken out of context. His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He’s done good things. Nothing to see here, folks. And so God bless Wright because he’s left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of ... well, let’s just call it a bag of “context.” Let’s start with the news out of his speeches Sunday and Monday . . . Sunday in Detroit, Wright explained to 10,000 people at the Fight for Freedom Fund dinner of the NAACP — an organization adept at taking offense to far less racist comments from non-blacks — that black and white brains are simply wired differently. Whites are “left-brain cognitive” while blacks are “right-brain” oriented. Each has “different ways of learning.” One wonders why Wright opposes separate-but-equal education. CNN carried the speech live, and anchor Soledad O’Brien reported from the scene that it was “a home run.” Then, Monday morning at the National Press Club, Wright attempted to clear the air about all of the supposedly deceptive sound bites he’s been reduced to. So, does he stand by his “God damn America” statement? Well, yeah. He explained that until American leaders apologize to Japan for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as to black Americans for slavery and racism, we will remain a damnable nation. What about that bit about America’s chickens coming home to roost on 9/11? Yep, we heard him right. “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you; those are biblical principles,” he explained. Asked whether he stood by his assertion that the U.S. government created HIV as part of a genocidal program to wipe out the black race, Wright mostly dodged but ultimately offered this nondenial denial: “I believe our government is capable of doing anything.” He also offered a zesty defense of Louis Farrakhan — “one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century” — and dismissed criticism of Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. To cap it off, Wright threw Obama under the bus. First, the pastor explained, Obama himself had taken Wright out of context. Moreover, Obama neither denounced nor distanced himself from Wright. And, besides, anything that Obama says on such matters is just stuff “politicians say.” They “do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.” So much for Obama’s new politics. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |