Rev. Jeremiah Wright has reappeared in the news, and he has also returned in Fitzsimmons Wireless breakroom discussion. In the past only my co-worker Alicia seemed to be aware of Rev. Wright but this time the whole breakroom was involved in Wright discussion. Since I was the only white guy around I clammed up and opened my ears to see what perspective the black people had.
"Rev. Wright needs to sit down and be quiet! He's ruining it for Obama!," said Leon, a 50-something gent.
A lady around forty who looks 26 (great cans) responded, "I don't think he needs to shut up but we all just need to ignore him. Like he said, he'll be what he is before and after the election, and that's a man of the Word. Obama's a politician." (It seems so long as you claim to be a church man you can get away with any kind of silly behavior you want, from bombing a defenseless nation to dancing around the pulpit shouting, "God damn America.")
"I've been around Chicago my whole life and I've never heard of the man!," another cranky sorta lady, also in her 50's, added.
This younger fellow who's always very quiet and dour sorta surprised me with his perspective. "He said America can't get away with doing all this stuff to these other people and not expect someone to do something to them. That's in the Bible."
Back on the phones the conversation continued. The lady a couple of seats behind me said, "We just need to realize that that's his opinion and he's not Obama and Obama has got his own opinion. There wasn't anything wrong with what he said, anyhow."
Leon countered, "It doesn't matter what we individually think! The media is beating this to death! Obama's numbers are going down!"
"Well, the media is going to do that," another girl said. I think somehow nobody was taking Leon's point that even if logically anyone knows Rev. Wright and Barack Obama are two separate people, the association is scaring off the masses of white voters needed for a win.
Leon also pointed out about 10 times that the person who lured Rev. Wright out of slumber for more controversy-mongering was a known Hillary Clinton supporter. If this is so, on one hand I'm taken aback at Hillary's underhanded tactics, but then there's also something to be said for that old broad's tenacity. Two weeks ago, before Pennsylvania, I watched all the Sunday morning political shows write Clinton's campaign off as horribly mismanaged and without a message, with resignations and dismissals by the handful. The next Sunday they were saying what a remarkable fortitude she had shown, and that she just might overcome Obama after all. I think it was Maureen O'Dowd from the
New York Times who even declared Obama had always been a longshot.
When Barack Obama compared the man who married him to a crazy old uncle, I knew a reverend's ego wasn't going to stand for that. Reverend Jeremiah has re-entered the fray to grab his last chance at the national spotlight, even if his epitaph is he was the man who derailed the campaign of America's would-be first black president.
However, I choose to view it as a service. It's not hyperbole when I say Obama scares me. On the rare occasions a solid policy position leaves his mouth, it invariably represents the polar opposite side of the aisle I occupy. Worse, he advocates policies that may well portend our economic ruin.
And don't even get me started on his wife, the Ivy League grad who earns a third of a million per year and laments the unjustice of paying back her school loans. Cry me a river, you out-of-touch, spoiled brat.
I wrote recently how I sat in an Evangelical church pew for a quarter century, and though I haven't been in a church for 10 years, I can nonetheless recite much of what I heard verbatim. My mind is still wired to sympathize with, if not support, what I learned there.
To think that Obama and his wife sat in that church for two decades and didn't absorb the bile spewed there is laughable. The fact that once Wright was exposed Obama was willing to wash his hands of him is offensive.
We are witnessing precisely what happens when a person is judged solely on the color of his skin. Wright pulls him one way, Sharpton the other. In the middle is Obama, no more black than you or me, who doesn't have the spine to simply be himself, not the chosen representative of his race. Worse, I don't think even he knows who he is.
I'll fight Hillary tooth and nail if she's the nominee, Art, but for now exposing Obama is Job One and I appreciate you helping the effort.
I watched Wright's Press Club appearance on YouTube and during his actual speech he came across as extremely well-read, eloquent and quick-witted. During the Q&A, though, he came across as 100% egotistical asshole. I couldn't imagine Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton acting with so little grace. I guess that's why, despite having a million dollar house, Wright is still small-time.