Wright Makes Obama Wrong

The comments made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright at one of his sermons shortly after 9/11 exposes an ugly side of Obama that few supporters, particularly whites, are willing to accept. Supporters claim that the media is taking an isolated incident and painting an inaccurate and ugly picture of Wright, and they decry the statements as mere soundbites strung together. Obama of course wants to put this aside and move past the politics of race and unite and blah, blah, blah. No no. Pay no attention to what's behind the curtain. We need to move forward. Bullshit.

When a central theme of your campaign is unity and it comes out that your pastor of the last 20 years who has been a close friend, mentor, and advisor (both spiritually and on the campaign trail) is a racist firebrand, then you deserve every bit of scrutiny and we should pause to examine it a little closer. It doesn't matter what race you are. When your pastor says "God damn America" and compares the plight of al Qaeda to that of blacks, you leave and never come back, assuming you disagree. What people are totally ignoring is the fact that this was not an isolated incident. It was not a Tourette's moment many years ago. These statements go to the core of what Wright believes. Maybe the sermon was unusual, but you cannot honestly believe that such statements were never made in any other sermons. It is beyond naive to think that. It's just plain stupid.

What's more, Wright has a close relationship to worst racists like Farrakhan and Jackson. Am I to assume then that giving the keys to the White House to Obama means giving a greater voice to those who deserve none at all, particularly in light of Obama's constant unity message? Plus, based on what I've read about his wife, she seems to fit into the picture of the angry black church in Chicago. Her thesis in Princeton railed against white racism and yet in interviews she has no recollection of it, which is curious since a thesis usually requires an entire semester to write and typically reflects the culmination of what you've learned.

What is even more frustrating is the blind eye Obama's white supporters are turning to this issue. It's as if they're so desperate to vote a black into office, they'll ignore and shout down as racist any criticism that comes his way. As usual, he made an articulate speech on the issue that wrapped his white supporters one more time around his finger, but the comments and his relationship to the man who made them make this something to strongly consider when thinking about Obama.