Deeper and Deeper
By JAMES TARANTO
March 28, 2008
"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Barack Obama said last week about his "spiritual mentor," the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright. But now, CNN reports, Obama is changing his tune. Well, sort of:
In an interview scheduled to air Friday on ABC's "The View"--excerpts of which aired on CNN on Thursday night--Obama talks about Wright's reaction to the controversy.
"Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were [sic] inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church," the senator said.
Does this mean he would have left? Or does it mean he would have stayed but felt uncomfortable? And when did Wright apologize? Blogger Tom Maguire undertakes an extensive investigation, and the answer appears to be: Never. In fact, Obama came close to apologizing to Wright. CNN again:
Obama also said on the ABC talk show that he has spoken with Wright since the uproar over the pastor's comments.
"I think he's saddened by what's happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way and people haven't seen the broader aspect of him," Obama said.
And if Obama wouldn't now feel "comfortable" belonging to Wright's church, how does he feel about Wright's successor, Otis Moss? Fox News reports that in his Easter Sunday sermon, Moss delivered quite a spirited defense of Wright:
"No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching," Moss said.
"The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?" he continued.
The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point.
"If I was Ice Cube I'd say it a little differently--'You picked the wrong folk to mess with,' " Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled "How to Handle a Public Lynching."
The ABC News report on Obama's "View" appearance quotes the senator as calling Wright a "brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp." Quips blogress Jennifer Rubin: "So brilliant, apparently, that he has uncovered the plot by white America to kill African Americans."
Meanwhile, the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal reports on a seminar at Cornell University, where the Rev. Kenneth Clarke, who heads an interfaith campus organization, offered a defense of Wright:
Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work, defended sermons by Wright that caused the controversy leading to Obama's speech.
Clarke challenged the audience to go beyond the sound bites and listen to Wright's entire sermon from Sept. 16, 2001 where he criticizes America. Clarke compared Wright's criticism of America to commentary found in speeches by Fredrick Douglas [sic] and Martin Luther King Jr.
The critiques are not unpatriotic, Clarke said.
The statements "reflect a different style of patriotism to which the larger society is often not accustomed," he said. "It is a willingness to criticize the nation and its practices to help the nation, as Dr. King once said, 'to be true to what it has put on paper' in relation to the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution."
A charitable way of describing this is that it requires an Ivy League level of intellectual sophistication to rationalize anti-Americanism as "a different style of patriotism," as if the choice between "God bless America" and "God damn America" were the equivalent of wearing a flag pin or not.
To those of us who are not so sophisticated--or who have a modicum of common sense in addition to a facile intellect--Clarke's defense of Wright sounds either crazy or disingenuous.
ABC News quotes Obama:
"Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don't normally listen to each other to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other."
And there's no question that Obama has promoted understanding between left-wing intellectuals and purveyors of resentment in the black community. That's not so hard, though. These groups have a natural affinity owing to their adversarial attitude toward America--sorry, "different style of patriotism." They are not, however, numerous enough to elect a president.
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