Doug, since you brought up Jeremiah Wright … I think the biggest insult to the Obama campaign was that Wright didn’t go hide under a rock somewhere. The Wright issue had just about died until Wright started jawboning on national television—he had to know that his speaking out in any way was bad news for Obama. And worse yet, what he said confirmed our worst suspicions about him—especially at the Press Club, he was arrogant, self-obsessed, mugging for the cameras and the crowd he had obviously had trucked in from Chicago to pack the hall (old community organizer’s trick—if you can’t count on a friendly audience, bring one with you).
Maybe his worst moment came at the NAACP speech when he spouted the discredited and silly theory that black and white children learn differently due to differences in—get this—their brains (white kids are “right-brain” dominant—object-oriented, logical, and bookish—black kids are “left-brain oriented”—subject-oriented, creative, intuitive, and chatty). In other words, you white folks like empirical evidence and books, and we blacks rely on our guts and are good dancers. Thanks, Rev—we ought to get you in touch with James Watson—you’d have a lot to talk about.
One thing is clear—Wright has totally broken from Obama and is now determined to undermine him. You’d think the he was working for Hillary Clinton. I’ve suggested in the past that some people might be afraid that an Obama victory would undermine their worldview and their platform—now I think Wright is one of those people.
Interesting that your shunning examples all involve religion in some way—is the real problem here not the volatile politics of race as much as the absolutism of religion? Wright cites some pseudo-research for some of his crackpot ideas, but for the most part he wraps them in Scripture—you can’t fault him for his crackpot conspiracy theories and angry tirades because he’s just quoting the book of Jeremiah and if you do, you’re insulting, not just him, but the entire “black church” (whatever that could mean).
