Obama's Swift Boat Moment?

I had a premonition that I ought to DVR Hannity & Colmes from last night (Friday 3/14 edition) since we were out for the evening with family members. As you all know, we've had our attention focused on a more important matter for the last 3 days so I had somewhat missed the fact that the Jeremiah Wright story (for those of you from Mars, that's Obama's pastor's name) has escalated to the extent it has.

So I just finished watching the whole show from last night, which was completely devoted to footage of different sermon clips from Wright, a replay of Hannity & Colmes' interview with Wright a little over a year ago and an interview with Obama responding to it all, conducted by Fox correspondent Major Garrett.

You may be surprised about the element that I find most offensive in all of Rev. Wright's comments...but it is a strand that I find quite consistently through the vast majority of modern American Democrat/liberal-oriented thought. It can be summed up in 2 words: moral equivalency.

Allow me to set the table here just a bit. Racial issues are a very sore subject in this country, still today; this MUST be acknowledged and truthfully confronted. Racism is something that I am passionately opposed to wherever I find it, as a follower of Christ who does my best to follow the 2 greatest commandments of Jesus Himself, namely, to love God and love people, with everything in me. Like most in my generation, the "n-word" makes me cringe on the rare occasions when I hear it, and I'm glad to affirm that those occurrences are, indeed, extremely few and far between. I label as despicable any comment, joke, etc., that suggests implicitly that those of darker skin hue are less worthy of affirmation and respect and fair treatment than Caucasians are.

Let us also not fail to acknowledge the sin of failure to stand up to the evils of segregation and lynching of blacks in this country for FAR too long. And make no mistake about it; it was a sin that God took seriously and still does today. Every time I watch Mississippi Burning, one of the most valuable movies ever filmed, I'm amazed that these events were still taking place in the South and in parts of the North during my parents' lifetime.

Had Rev. Wright limited his remarks to references to all of these factors, imbuing it all with passion and the sorrow he shares as someone who witnessed much of it personally, I would have no criticism at all to level. Not only would I support his right to say it; I would stand with him.

Here are the areas where and reasons why I repudiate the sentiments of Rev. Wright:

1) Wright portrays a failure, which seems deliberate and militant to me, to acknowledge the enormous strides that have been made in this country in race relations in the last 40 years. I am open to correction in this regard, but I believe that race is not an issue of division to the vast majority of my generation. When we see someone, regardless of ethnicity, they are a person first, an American second and whatever race they are is at best third on the list, if not lower. It is an item of interest, certainly not a pejorative. Wright completely fails to appreciate this massive advance in understanding.
2) Like fellow offenders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Wright pins all of the blame for the racial and genocial sins of the past on America and its leaders. Yet, he has no problem hobnobbing with and hugging the necks of today's megalomaniacal world leaders, e.g. Muammar Khadafi. (None other than Louis Farrakhan accompanied Wright on his trip to Tripoli for an audience with Khadafi.) From where does this disconnect emerge? What are its origins? I have not done the study necessary an explanation to this question deserves, but I'll venture the assertion that it all is very demagogic, at best, and a shameful and wilful ignoring of today's most desperate tyrannies, at worst. Again, it's called MORAL EQUIVALENCY. It is historically dishonest, and it is wrong.
3) Wright is exploiting that which divides us here in this country, rather than the common ground on which we can all stand in hopes of building a continuously better nation. I first visited the website of Trinity United Church of Christ about a year and a half ago, around December 2006, in preparation for an interview I was conducting for IWU with someone who attended there and was seeking adjunct faculty status with us. This was before Obama had even declared his candidacy for the Presidency, though I knew he attended there (I don't recall how I knew this at that time; as I've told countless people, my mind is more cluttered with useless trivia than anyone else with whom I'm acquainted!). In any event, what I saw on TUCC's website at that time in terms of ministering specifically to a BLACK congregation with BLACK values, etc., etc., really did not bother me. Clearly, that was their demographic; so what, I thought at the time? Most churches have target audiences, whether or not they admit it or are even conscious of it. Now that I've seen footage, though, where America is referred to as the "U.S. of KKK A." by Wright, and he blames America for unleashing the HIV virus as a genocide mechanism on black males and he also calls on God to "d--n America" repeatedly....I believe we have a problem. (A sidebar, back to my IWU interview in 12/06: As delicately as possible, as we sometimes have to do, I brought up the subject of her church to Tonya. The aspect of it all that I was concerned about at that time impinged on the overt support of the United Church of Christ denomination for gay rights and ordination of gays into the ministry; the UCC ordained their first gay minister in 1972! Tonya replied that, yes she had attended for a number of years and was a member there, but wasn't sure how long she could continue on, due to her increasing discomfort with certain trends she was observing. Not her exact words, but something to that effect. It all sounds quite prescient now, not?)

I don't think the Republicans will let this go, and they shouldn't. Barack Obama has premised his entire candidacy on bringing people together, and getting past the policies and battles that have bitterly split this country. His pastor is not helping in this endeavor. And as my friend Jed put it, "where we attend church says a lot about who we are, period."

More on this later....it is far from over, I'm convinced.