A reader:
Derb — The emerging line I’m getting from the media, from people I know, and online, regarding Rev. Wright goes something like this. “Many black churches have a certain style of preaching that includes rhetoric of passion, even anger, directed at the political and social system. This communication style must be appreciated in the context of the African-American church. Non-blacks shouldn’t be offended by this style, as the metaphors, images and language of the style are not intended to offend. This style should be appreciated as an interactive performance of empowerment, not as a literal communication of facts.”
I understand this and I certainly don’t want to go around criticizing other peoples’ church experiences. However, I think the Obama campaign should understand that many non-blacks (such as myself and my Japanese-American wife) have a certain style of voting that excludes support for the rhetoric of anger, as exemplified by Rev. Wright. And we certainly don’t appreciate anyone criticizing our voting experience.
[Me] I repeat: Obama’s toast. He may yet get the Democratic nomination, but tens of millions of Americans who are neither (a) black nor (b) guilty white liberals are simply appalled that Obama would revere a guy like Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, whatever the particularities of which services he did and didn’t attend. It defies belief that Obama knew this man for all that time, intimately enough to have him supervise at the Obama wedding and the children’s baptisms, yet did not know that Wright is a white-hating, America-hating crank. Who on earth believes this?
The MSM can’t smother this, not in the age of the web, though they are trying mightily. (The Sunday New York Times “Week in Review” Section had nothing about Wright; neither did the main news section.) Americans are a fair-minded people, who find double standards obnoxious. A guy who says “nappy-headed ho’s” in an irreverent radio show is dragged round the city walls behind a chariot to the delighted howls of a mob of self-righteous “anti-racists”; yet a man who uses the authority of the cloth to damn our country and curse white people, is praised as a “biblical scholar” by a candidate for the presidency? I don’t think so. This won’t stand. The man is toast.
I don’t even think Gore can pick Obama as a running mate now.