WAS [IS] REV JEREMIAH WRIGHT REALLY THAT WRONG??

Apparently I am missing something in the brouhaha over Rev Jeremiah Wright and Senator Barack Obama.

I read and reread the Chicago Tribune transcript of his comments at the National Press Club.
I watched his speech to the NAACP in Detroit. Watched major parts of it again on various “news” channels.
Watched members of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party fall all over themselves on various cable and network news shows trying to either distance themselves from or engage in attacks on Obama and Wright that were straight out the Republican play book.
Witnessed liberals being liberals; falling prey to an incipient McCarthyism. Hillary is disgusting in this respect.
Even normally rational NY Times columnist Bob Herbert denounced Wright in his column. Eric Alterman, author of Why I Am a Liberal and chief protagonist at Media Matters,fell prey in critiquing Maureen Dowd’s Times column:”It’s his Farrakhan-like fantasies that make this preacher beyond the pale, not his feelings about the candidate”…
Didn’t see, but clearly imagined John McCain [alias Bush’s 3rd term] chortling in his scotch over the disarray within the Democratic race.
Got very disgusted.

You see, I just don’t get it.

Please, pray tell [sic] What specifically did Jeremiah Wright say that so freaked these people out??
Damned if I can figure it out.

His speech on Sunday was an old fashioned stem winder, a grandiose display of chutzpah, rhetoric and facts.
He detailed the works that his church had been involved in over tha last three decades. With Aids, with self help programs, with school scholarships and so much more.

He explained the Louis Farrakhan connection for what it is, a TWENTY YEAR OLD comment. He never endorsed the Nation of Islam or any policy of racial separation, but he did rightfully point out that in fact, the Nation, and its leader, are very serious forces in the Black community. What other African-American organization can, or has, put ONE MILLION people on the streets of Washington DC in the last twenty years?? That’s a LOT of people.

And AID as a government plot? This is NOT NEWS. I heard this same view expressed 10-15 years ago from African American acquaintances.
According to the London [ UK] Guardian:

Almost half of all African-Americans believe that HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is man-made, more than a quarter believe it was produced in a government laboratory and one in eight think it was created and spread by the CIA, according to a study released by Rand Corporation and the University of Oregon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/26/aids.usa

From the NY Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DC1038F931A25756C0A964958260
The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/lofiversion/index.php/t3034.html

The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot :http://www.whale.to/b/cantwell19.html

And it is impossible to ignore the fact of the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experimentation carried out by our governmentfrom 1932 to 1972 on 399 black Men in the later stages of syphilis affliction. FORTY YEARS! http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html]

Maybe. just maybe, there might be some basis for the fears

And Terrorism by the USA as a causative factor in 9/11???

In the latest iteration of US sponsored terrorism we need go no further than the current conflict in Iraq. Do the words Abu Grihab or Rendition bring any pleasant thought to mind? I didn’t think so.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. From the late 1800s through WWII the US military invaded one Central and South American country after another, with the end result almost always being that we ended up supporting a brutal dictatorship. In Argentina, in Chile, in Paraguay and many other countries. In the Philippines we looked the other way crimes committed by the dictator Ferdiand Marcos in part because of our need for the military bases in the Islands that were essential to the Vietnam war effort. In South Africa … wretched, racist South Africa…the US supported a brutal apartheid regime for over 30 years..

And Saudi Arabia….please, don’t get me started on the medieval mores of Bush pals the House of Saud.

Did the American people bring this on? No we did not. But acting in our name, one successive government after another, usually acting on behalf of the Corporations who are most often the beneficiaries, whether its united Fruit in South America or US financial institutions in South Africa, in part, DID. And, we the voters, we elected those people who did…

The problem is not with Rev Wright, self important grandstander though he may be. It lies with the inability of the candidates to see the truth behind the rhetorical flourishes. It lies with the Democratic candidates pandering to a neo con firestorm of fear. Rather than take the substantive issues raised by the Reverend in context we are smitten with sound bite after sound bite, always OUT of context and perversely annotated to a page in Karl Rove’s Republican Play book of Fear Mongering

And the bit about being at Obama’s White House door on January 21st…that’s Democracy. If the will of the people is embodied in a president, it is incumbent on that people to ensure that the holder of that office act on BEHALF of the people, and that, my friends, means holding his feet to the political fire. Trust, but verify.

http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/2/v2n2_misa.html
http://www.easternct.edu/personal/faculty/pocock/milact.htm
http://mondediplo.com/1998/12/05safr

What we are talking about here is American Imperialism and how the empire has sought to enforce its will and prerogatives.
Now, Rev Wright did not call it that. I did. But nonetheless, the fact remains that we, the USA of A, land of Liberty, of fields of amber grain on the fluted plain, are not seen very favorably by much of the “Third” world. We are NOT loved. And it is not the least bit surprising that a conclusion could be reached that, at the very least, some of the chickens HAVE, in fact, come home to roost. That, dear reader, is also a reality.
Pew Research: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/6/arab-and-muslim-perceptions-of-the-united-states
Council on Foreign Relations http://www.cfr.org/publication/8934/perceptions_of_us_public_diplomacy.html

And, amid all the controversy. the WORDS spoken by Rev Wright are too easily overlooked…

Transcript of Rev Wright’s speech before the National Press Club on Monday April 28, 2008.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-wrighttranscript-04282008,0,3593201.story

Read. Then ask your self, how wrong was Rev Wright???

---

Posted in BARAK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON, PRESIDENTIAL RACE, Republican Party, Terrorism, Torture