Wright's Jeremiads

Bill Moyers did his best last night on PBS to put Barack Obama's controversial pastor into perspective. He succeeded in showing the man's brilliance but created unease in an observer who, by taste and temperament, is not attracted to apocalyptic preaching about the human condition.

From the interview, it's easy to see what Obama found in Jeremiah Wright and his church that gave a new dimension to his secular desire to help the poor and dispossessed during his early days in Chicago.

Wright's church apparently did and does good work in uplifting its community, but the social benefits come with a moral price--the preacher's selective view of good and evil in the political world.

Consider Wright's use of Martin Luther King to justify his own history. "Dr. King, of course, was vilified," he told Moyers, asserting that, after King talked about racism, militarism and capitalism, he was "ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds...He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war."

Martin Luther King's opposition to the war made him unpopular with Lyndon Johnson but not the rest of America, least of all African-Americans and, unlike Wright, he did not use it to condemn all of American history, from the mistreatment of Native Americans to plotting drug addiction in black communities.

The Rev. Wright's need to "damn" America leads him to a peculiar view of history. He goes back centuries to mine our national past for evil but, when asked about Louis Farrakhan's racist and anti-Semitic speech, dismisses it with "That was twenty years ago" and praises him for getting African-Americans off drugs and giving them self-respect.

Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience: "(W)hat happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor."

The Power and Promise of an Ugly Word

As Barack Obama stands at the crossroads of race in America and offers himself as an agent of healing, he is a symbol of both the fears and hopes aroused by an ugly word, miscegenation.

When he was born in 1961, his parents' marriage was illegal in 17 states of the Union. It was six years later that the Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute against racially mixed marriages as unconstitutional and ended anti-miscegenation laws in America.

Such unions have always been denounced by both black and white extremists. Louis Farrakhan, who received last year's Jeremiah Wright A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award as a man "who truly epitomized greatness" from Obama's church, has always opposed intermarriage and called it "unnatural." In doing so, he was echoing the classic sneer of white bigots, "Would you want your sister to marry one?"

Yet, as long ago as 1963, in a memorable article in Commentary titled "My Negro Problem--and Ours," Norman Podhoretz, confessing his "twisted" racial fears and animus, came to the judgment that "the wholesale merging of the two races is the most desirable alternative" to resolving the American dilemma.

The irony now is that Obama, who wants to transcend race, is being pressured to reconcile his heritages while subtly distancing himself from the pain of both, rejecting both his pastor's rage and his white grandmother's fears.

In an era of more and more talented biracial people like Obama, Derek Jeter, Halle Berry and so many others, it's sad to see the power of an ugly either-or still distorting the possibilities of a beautiful both.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Last March 4th, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, arms linked with civil rights leaders, were reenacting the 1965 march in Selma, united in declaring their debt to the non-violence of Martin Luther King. Today, they are at the precipice of divisions that could be suicidal for their party in November.

In Obama's grasp for the nomination and Clinton's last stand in Texas and Ohio, identity politics are threatening to tear the Democrats apart--accusations against him of Farrakhan sympathies to unnerve Jewish voters, paired with countercharges that the Clinton campaign is fueling them by distributing a photo of Obama in Muslim garb. Voters are being targeted by race, gender, ethnicity, economic status and any other demographic that could prejudice them

Last March, Hillary Clinton was telling worshippers at Selma's First Baptist Church that the Civil Rights Act of 1965 today "is giving Senator Obama the chance to run for president. And by its logic and spirit...yes, it is giving me that chance.”

Before the march, Obama praised both Clintons and said of the coming political campaign, “We don’t have time for other folks to divide us.”

But the conventional wisdom of inciting demographic splits among voters has overrun those promises to bring them together in rejecting the extremes of the Bush era and attract Democrats of all stripes, along with Independents and disillusioned moderate Republicans.

Tomorrow should be the tipping point. With those critical primary prizes in the balance, will the results mark an end to the divisiveness or fuel continuing contention to give John McCain, against all logic, a chance to enter the White House as Bush Lite?

Picturing a President

If Barack Obama is sworn in next January, last night's debate may prove to be the turning point when American voters started seeing him as more than a gifted candidate. Hillary Clinton's job was to create doubts about his fitness to be President, but she ended up giving Obama the opportunity to demonstrate he has the qualities for the job.

After a peevish start (citing a Saturday Night Live skit to air her grievances against the questioners), Sen. Clinton worked hard to present herself as Presidential and rattle Obama into appearing less so. But he never took the bait.

In 15 minutes about health care, he defended his position without demeaning hers. When she accused him of wanting to bomb Pakistan, he restated his more nuanced position and pointed out that the Bush Administration had just done what he proposed in taking out an al Qaeda leader. When she criticized him for not "rejecting" Louis Farrakhan's support, Obama pointed out that he had denounced his racist views but would be happy to reject them as well, if there was a distinction.

As the long campaign has gone on, Obama's command and self-confidence have been visibly growing, thereby undermining the arguments about inexperience the Clinton campaign has tried to use against him.

In this last debate before the nomination is decided, he demolished them. In the general election campaign, John McCain will have to work very hard to prove that his years in Washington qualify him to make better decisions about the future than Barack Obama.

The Jewish Question

With Martin Luther King in the crosshairs, could Jews be far behind? Now identity politics (read hatred and division) is catching up with the Chosen People who are always a target of choice when blood is in the air.

First there is an attempt by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to link Barack Obama to his church's year-old award to Louis Farrakhan, conveniently overlooking the fact that the anti-Semite firebrand of yore is dying of cancer and professing "enlightenment," while still denouncing the kind of interracial marriage that spawned Obama as "unnatural."

Obama issued a statement distancing himself from Farrakhan that satisfied Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, who joined other Jewish leaders in signing an open letter denouncing “hateful e-mails” directed at Obama.

Now here comes Politico with a thumb-sucking, fact-free piece headed "Jewish voters lean toward Hillary," asserting that, after years of courting it, she is "well positioned to win the Jewish vote in Nevada’s Jan. 19 caucuses and in the Jewish centers of New York, New Jersey and California on Feb. 5."

While quoting Rothman as saying about Obama, “Like many other segments of the American community, Jewish Americans see him as a unifying figure with the intellect and skill to make change,” Politico nevertheless finds enough supporters among politicians to conclude that Clinton has won "the trust of the hawkish leadership of New York’s Jewish community."

As someone who can be Googled to reveal decades-old listings as a member of the Jewish media conspiracy against America, perhaps I may be forgiven for wanting to barf at this kind of "journalism."

Joe Lieberman and Jewish Neo-Cons to the contrary, the Protocols of Zion people will have to look elsewhere for group guilt in today's politics. Those whose parents and grandparents came to this country to escape the Holocaust are not lining up to support Bush's war in the Mideast or to choose between Clinton and Obama as the best person to end it.

Enough already.