WRIGHT AS RAIN
Right as rain. We've all heard that one, though I've never been completely sure what it means. However, Pastor Wright as rain? I know exactly what that means. It means rain on Barack Obama's parade, it means rain that squelches a movement which was taking on epic proportions. Fact is, in spite of Reverend Wright's downpours of hate, Obama remains in good shape, but it has been an interesting development. Don't turn the page yet, because I know most people, myself included, are pretty tired of hearing about ol' Jeremiah, but it's worth a little extra kicking around because his ascent into the national spotlight is noteworthy, although not for any reasons that are good.
Until a week ago, I believed he was just another dime-a-dozen Hellfire preacher. Rousing his congregation with spirited and passionate speeches, tongue-in-cheek perhaps, knowing he was over the top, but perfecting his shtick from the pulpit. It hadn't occurred to me that he was anything other than a friend to Barack Obama, a member of his Trinity Church in Chicago for twenty years. This was, after all, the same man who married Obama and his wife, Michelle, baptized their children. The press had focused on the implausibility of Obama's claims that he had never heard these types of speeches and had no idea of the Reverend's radical and racist views. The American government developed AIDS specifically to destroy the black race? Deliberately infested black neighborhoods with drugs to destroy lives and families? The damage was done the moment this story surfaced. Obama tried to quell it, tried with increasing passion to distance himself, first from the remarks, then from the man himself.
Then came the Jeremiah Wright interview with Bill Moyers, the PBS mensch. Uh oh. This is not a passing rain shower, this is Wright as rain, as in deluge. It was clear after the Moyers interview, and if that didn't do it for you the speech to the Press Club in Detroit a day later removed any doubt, that Wright has no love for Obama, and certainly, no desire for him to be President of the Untied States. This is a sad, whore of a man, who makes Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson look like pikers when it comes to peddling racism, and remember, for those three men, the threat to the demand for their product is very real. What threat? The threat of an African-American President.
There was never a time when I considered supporting Barack Obama, but it's not because he's black. I am fortunate to have grown up in a home where racism would never have been tolerated, and its association with stupidity was laid out in understandable terms at a young age. I couldn't consider Obama because he is woefully unqualified for the job. However, I have a deep admiration for the man. I find him to be both a gentleman and a gentle man. He is very, very bright and a stunningly moving speaker. He is commanding and I find his delivery of words to be very moving. What I admire most about him, is what he demonstrated about our great country.
It began in New Hampshire, and I stated just over a year ago in an interview with Dan Rather, that I thought Obama would take New Hampshire in the primary because of the passionate, and huge, crowds that he was drawing very early in the game. New Hampshire is routinely accused by outsiders of being a racist, "redneck" state. Pols complain every four years that we are "too white" and don't represent the rest of the country. As it turns out, we were, and are, very representative of the rest of the country. I was thrilled with his performance here, just narrowly defeated by Clinton, but taking in over 110,000 votes. Not bad for a black man in a racist state, huh? As history now knows, he continued to blaze that same trail across the country, and this week, with Indiana and North Carolina voting, it will continue. He showed us that a young kid, from a single-parent home, can get through a few troubled years and with hard work, diligence, focus and tenacity, become a serious contender for, if not actually win the office of, President of the Untied States. In every state, from the heartland to the south to the north and northwest, he has garnered votes from every demographic and proved, I believe, that racism in this country is disappearing, that Americans, by and large, are fair and color-blind.
You can see how that message is not going to sell for guys like Reverend Wright, Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpton. There must be something about that collar that is choking off the bloodflow to the brains of the Three Amigos, because just as this country has a positive, history-making shift in the paradigm, who was it that rushed in to rain on the parade? The Ku Klux Klan? David Duke? Nazi skinheads? No, not this time. This time it came from the most unlikely source. This time, the ugly head of race-merchandising rose from behind the pulpit. It kind of makes you wonder...what would Jesus do?
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