Unpacking Jeremiah Wright

There is so much to unpack. But I am so overwhelmed by the total weirdness of this media hysteria about one flamboyant black minister, most of whose statements are completely unexceptionable in substance if not in presentation, that I just don’t know where to start.

Fortunately for me, there is a lot of very smart commentary amid the mounds and mounds of overwrought histrionics from media pundits and right-wing lunatics — starting with John Cole, who titles his post “Obama Kicks Wright in the Junk“:

Because I refuse to say he threw him under the bus, which is now my least favorite expression in the English language. …

[…]

All the talking heads assured me he had to do this, and now he has. I am not sure why it was necessary, as it was pretty clear to me when listening to Wright the past few days that he was not speaking for Obama, but such is the guilt-by-association bullshit of the media.

As to Wright himself, well, I have my own thoughts. First and foremost, I guess I am no longer the delicate fainting flower that most other bloggers and media commenters are these days. I spent several years in the early days of this blog being all sorts of outraged about petty bullshit. I spent days calling Ted Rall an asshole (he still is, I think), days opining about what an asshole Michael Moore is, and so on. I got my panties all in a bunch about Ward Churchhill (also a dick), and stupid things Bill Maher may or may not have said, and so on.

And you know what? They may be assholes, or jerks, or whatever term you want to use, but they sure as hell didn’t run this economy into the ground. They aren’t responsible for turning a huge surplus into a several hundred billion dollar deficit. I have yet to read any memos from Barbra Streisand detailing how we should spy on American citizens.

And so it is with Jeremiah Wright. Is he a jerk? I don’t think there is any argument to be made that lately he hasn’t in fact been one big, giant, puckered asshole. His ego tour the past few days was all about him, but so what? I blame the media as much as I blame him. Is it an offensive notion that the government created aids? Absolutely, but I refuse to get all bent out of shape about it, because the government that tortures people and ran the Tuskegee experiment and wiretapped MLK for years opens itself up to crazy accusations like that.

I bolded those last two sentences because I love them so much, and almost nobody is making that very simple point that you are not paranoid if they really are out to get you (or have been enough times in the past that you have ample reason not to trust them).

Cole also handily takes down Mary Katharine Ham for her breathlessly delivered revelation that Obama is not “anti-political”:

Mary Katharine Ham:

Gee, I wonder why Obama, the anti-political posturer, disowned Wright today. My dad got a call last night that might explain.I got some more information about that call.

It was a live call last night around 7 p.m., not a robocall.

Where do these wingnuts come up with this perception? I see the same sort of crap from the Hillary Clinton blogs and the pro-Clinton commenters- this notion that Obama supporters are somehow unaware that Barack Obama is GASP a politician.

He is a United States Senator. He is running for the highest political office in the land. He is a politician. We are aware of this. Trying to change the tone and tenor in Washington as well as how politics is conducted is not apolitical, and we are all aware of this. What we reject is the current status of our politics, not the notion of politics. What we see in Obama is a chance to change the nature of our current political mess.

What we don’t see is Obama as apolitical. That is just stupid. Some might say it is TOWNHALL stupid.

So, attention wingnuts- We are aware Obama is a politician, and your attempt at witty comments aren’t breaking news to us. All it is doing is proving that we are right to think you are a moron.

I will add one thought to what has been said about today’s events. One of the reasons I support Obama’s candidacy and admire him as a person so much is the way he stretches to try to understand where another person might be coming from. And he continues to do that here. Even though Obama said he was angered and hurt by Rev. Wright’s presuming to know his inner motives (by saying that Obama’s earlier condemnation of his remarks was “political posturing”), and although he (Obama) clearly feels a sense of betrayal (“I don’t think that he showed much concern for me”), he was still able to acknowledge that Rev. Wright might have had legitimate reasons for speaking out that had nothing to do with a desire to hurt Obama’s candidacy (even though clearly that has been the result):

Well, look, as I said before, the person I saw yesterday was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years. I understand that — I think he was pained and angered from what had happened previously, during the first stage of this controversy. I think he felt vilified and attacked, and I understand that he wanted to defend himself.

I understand that, you know, he’s gone through difficult times of late, and that he’s leaving his ministry after many years. And so, you know, that may account for the change.

Okay, why do I suddenly have the lyrics of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” running through my head?

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