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Jeremiah Wright is Everywhere

The blogosphere is roiling with views on Jeremiah Wright’s recent public appearances (on Friday on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal, on Sunday at an NAACP dinner, and on Monday at the National Press Club).

[assbach / Flickr]

Some posts echo of the idea visible in much of the mainstream media that Wright spells serious trouble for Obama’s campaign. But you can also find every other conceivable angle. Here’s the tip of the iceberg.

Robert Koulish, a progressive and a professor of political science at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD, thinks Obama may ultimately benefit from Wright’s renewed visibility:

By acting like the cartoon he has accused YouTubers of making him, Jeremiah Wright may have done Barack Obama a huge favor, if the Obama campaign plays it right.[…]

The mainstream media does not do well with subtleties. Nor does it do well with meta narratives that fail to play well in sound bites.

It couldn’t handle the possibility that Wright and Obama for that matter were making truth claims that might really challenge the hegemonic master race narrative in 2008 America. […] The press can deal with Obama shunning his former pastor. Just look at this mornings headlines. Okay, thank you Mr. Wright, you have helped Obama to brush off some some increasingly heavy and distracting baggage.

Blogger Pan Metron feels that Obama’s character is suspect because he used Trinity Church for political reasons even though he apparently disagreed with Wright’s views:

What underlies this drama, it seems to me with increasing clarity, is a posturing and betrayal, and one that actually inclines me to have more sympathy for the Reverend than the Senator.

I do not share Reverend Wright’s views of race relations nor condone his offensive demagoguery. […]

And yet for all that, this week I came to sympathize with Rev. Wright and even admire his obstinacy for getting in front of the cameras […] Twenty years ago a young, ambitious, and highly educated African-American man launched a political career in Chicago. That man found Trinity Church to be useful, and - whether he internalized its principles or not - found it quite convenient to be seen in the pews of a radical and outspoken pastor who praised Louis Farrakhan and blamed the American government and “rich white people” for the ills confronting his community. Let’s be honest: this association could only help the local Obama, the Chicago Obama, the Obama whose limits of achievement were not framed by lack of appeal to the middle or the progressive elite but by inability to overcome his own aloof elitism - a frame clearly delineated as he was defeated soundly by a former Black Panther in his first run at national office. […]

Many commentators, and Obama’s own staff, seem to think the whole Wright association is a non-issue if Obama claims he does not agree and denounces Wright’s views, but I dissent: it is precisely because he does not agree that Obama’s two-decade participation in Rev. Wright’s church makes me question his character.

Ruth Ellis Haworth thinks Wright is simply speaking out because he has valuable things to add to America’s conversation about race:

I like Jeremiah Wright. I watched his speech on Sunday to the NAACP and then I watched his press conference the next day. He has a lot of fascinating things to say. He is an extremely engaging speaker. And he is off the charts charming.

When I listened to Wright on Sunday and Monday, I thought that he was speaking out because he wanted to use the opportunity he had been given to say some important things that Americans should hear. […] Pundits on CNN are making it sound like Wright has been speaking out as part of a grudge match with Obama, but I don’t see any evidence of that. […]

I don’t want to say that I agree with everything with Wright says. He said that the US Center for Disease Control developed AIDS and the US government spread it, which sounds like a dangerous conspiracy theory. He said things I disagree with about Israel.

But Obama went too far in criticizing Wright. He described him as a hate-filled lunatic. […] Over at HuffPost they’re describing him as an attention-seeking troll, mad, a two-bit celebrity. We have, it seems, lost a valuable new voice just days after we got to hear him.

Dirty Harry, an unemployed screenwriter in Los Angeles, sees Wright’s comments as evidence that the US has made progress in race relations since the 1960s:

Reverend Wright says some crazy stuff. Really crazy stuff! Inflammatory, incorrect, disingenous scary, crazy stuff. […]

He has thrust these issues into the spotlight and all Americans with a modicum of reason are able to see Reverend Wright for what he is. The debate this has spawned has been tremendous for this country. Has it been painful? Yes. Has he opened wounds? Yes. But, by having this debate in the open; bringing it to a national (and international) stage he has highlighted the positive change this country has undergone since [Martin Luther King, Jr. …]

Thank you, Reverend Wright. Thank you for showing us how bitter and foolish a man becomes when he ignores the words of Dr. King and judges others by the color of their skin.

Try typing “Jeremiah Wright” into Google blog search and you’ll be up all night.