From James Taranto's "Best of the Web" over at the Wall Street Journal comes several interesting items about Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright and the "black church" in America. Here are two of them.1) The real proof that Wright is right about Obama, though, comes from this passage in a New York Times story from April 30, 2007--a year ago yesterday:
Mr. Wright, who has long prided himself on criticizing the establishment, said he knew that he may not play well in Mr. Obama's audition for the ultimate establishment job. "If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me," Mr. Wright said with a shrug. "I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen."
Assuming Wright's account of the conversation was accurate--and as far as we know, Obama has never disputed it--Obama not only is acting out of political expediency now, but was making plans a year ago to do so. All part of the effort to sell him as a new kind of politician--and if you buy it, we've got some change you can believe in.
2) Black Churchmen Against Wright ---- The Los Angeles Times interviews some local black ministers and finds few fans of Jeremiah Wright:
"This didn't have anything to do with the black church--it was basically an attack on the individual message he proclaimed, which hurt some individuals," said the Rev. K.W. Tulloss of Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Boyle Heights. "My own members were offended by Rev. Wright's words. His views have cast a wedge between people, and that's the exact opposite of the unity Jesus represented." . . .
Bishop John Bryant of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who has known Wright for 30 years, said he would have used less provocative language. "How one speaks is as important as the right to do so," Bryant said. "If it is done in an inflammatory way, the substance of the message gets lost in the rhetorical style."
Kerman Maddox, a member of First AME church in Los Angeles, said that he had listened to hundreds of sermons in black churches nationwide as part of his political and community work, and that Wright's messages did "not represent mainstream black thought on Sunday morning."
He said he had never heard pastors curse America or proclaim, as Wright had, that the U.S. government caused AIDS among blacks. He said the common pulpit themes had long been unity, personal responsibility, loving your neighbor and improving your neighborhoods.
If this is an accurate picture, then Karl of ProteinWisdom.com has a point when he criticizes "the establishment media," saying they "not only avoided soliciting the opinion of other black religious leaders, but also promoted the notion that Wright was expressing views commonly expressed within black churches."
Karl attributes this media failure to pro-Obama partisanship, but it occurs to us that another factor may be at work. There is an ideological symbiosis between whites of the far left and black extremists like Wright: The former find moral justification for their anti-American views in the marginalization of blacks that the latter promote.
Anyone with an ideological hostility to America has an interest in promoting the notion that America is inveterately racist, and this may come into play in some newsroom decisions.
