My opinion on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy is that it's a complete waste of my time, and I doubt anybody outside the insular media community even cares about it. People like William Kristol, whose column today was focused on Obama and race, desperately want to find a "Gotcha!" for Barack Obama, and it's telling that this is the best they can do.
These are the problems I have with the reportage:
1) Why should I care that Obama belongs to a congregation led by a somewhat militant black preacher? It is fatuous to suggest that Obama bears any responsibility for the opinions of his minister, no matter how long he's been a member of the congregation. I myself was for the first 18 years of my life a member of religious flocks, the leaders of which held opinions wildly at variance to my own--disbelief in the theory of natural selection, fear and hatred of homosexuals, etc. etc. I'm no more obligated to defend or deny these beliefs than Obama is.
2) There is a towering double standard at work here. The close association between the Republican Party and its religious allies, many of whom are apt to make statements far more anti-American than Rev. Wright's, is not questioned with nearly this much vigor.
3) There is an important element to the argument against Rev. Wright's statements, never spoken, but always implicit. It is the belief that Wright doesn't have the right to be so angry about the status of African Americans in the country today. Kristol accuses Wright of "using his pulpit to propagate racial resentment", and frankly this is a ridiculous accusation. The racial resentment exists all by itself, because after 140 years of promises, African American communities still have not got their fair share. People like Kristol apparently believe that there isn't anything wrong, and it's just a few agitators like Wright stirring things up. I am mystified at how ignorant and brain-dead someone can be, and still get a slick job writing columns for the New York Times. Kristol insists in his column that we're making racial progress, we don't need a new racial dialog, and in fact it would be counter-productive. If we just keep our heads down, eyes forward, and don't talk about it, everything will be fine.
He even has the temerity to quote Pat Moynihan, a Nixon adviser who in 1969 said that America needed to ignore the race issue for a while and just let "Negro progress" continue on its own. Kristol claims that racial progress "has in fact continued in America" (not bothering to support this assertion with anything, but who cares, it's only journalism) and happily slides past the fact that he was just talking about an adviser to Nixon, the king of the Southern Strategy. I take back what I said about Kristol being better than David Brooks--this column was such a complete lemon that I really feel sorry for whoever has been duped into signing Willy's checks.
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The debate is a trumped-up "Gotcha" for the press -- but more importantly, an "issue" where the chatterers can talk endlessly about "whether race matters" and all that mindlessness. Of course, framing the Wright/Obama thing this way is by nature racist, because the justification for the "story" is the assumption that Obama, as black man, can't have opinions that much different from Wright. While that "seems" benign, the divergence from how McCain's 180 on Falwell and Pat Robertson was treated by the media shows the difference. Whites can "agree to disagree" even with those whose support they seek, while blacks "necessarily agree" with their supporters, be they Farrakhan , Wright, or any fool with dark skin.
What it comes down to is a narrowing of the subjectivity of blacks, which is the signal of all racism -- Asians are "inscrutable," so who knows what they're thinking? Blacks are this and that, so we *know* what they're thinking, wink wink. And the list goes on. Pygmies can't be as smart or have the same range of feelings.
It's all frustrating.
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