Newstradamus: Saddle up and smear

R. J. Matson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle won't go away, at least from the tabloid television news, which loves the "let's you and him fight" style of election coverage. The discovery of some other juicy tidbits that Barack Obama's former pastor may have said or done almost pushed off the air the important speeches by all three presidential candidates about the economy.

Bill Clinton says that "if candidates don't want to get beat up, then don't run for office. ... Let's saddle up and have an argument."

OK, we'll let go for the moment that the Clintons are among the biggest protesters when something is said about them that they don't like. (Witness the wailing that resulted when their daughter Chelsea — an adult who has willingly "saddled up" for the campaign trail — was asked a legitimate question about the Monica Lewinsky incident.)

So if Hillary Clinton is OK with ignoring Obama's passionate rejection of Wright's more extremist views, saying SHE would have left his church, and that Obama is not a Muslim "as far as I know," then she has no problem with being called a liar for misremembering the conditions of her mission to Bosnia as First Lady, or being accused of trying to "kneecap" Obama, Tonya Harding style, to make him unelectable in her bid for superdelegates.

And by that standard, it's business as usual if John McCain is said to have a "senior moment" over al-Qaida and Iran, or is so old he needs Depends.

Well, it's not OK with me. I'm willing to accept Obama's statements about what he believes about America, Clinton's explanation that she misremembered about her Tusla reception, and the McCain campaign's description of his flubs about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites as misspeaking.

I'm even willing to give Reverend Wright a little benefit of the doubt and look a little deeper. When Hillary opined about Wright, she said she based her view — as most people did — on what she "heard and saw" about the man, presumably those small YouTube clips that cycled over and over.

I took a look at the transcript of the sermon from which the most controversial clip was taken — given after 9/11. The part of the sermon in the popular video was a reference to an appearance on Fox News by Edward Peck, a former state department official and terrorism expert in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Wright said:

"This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out ... that ... America's chickens are coming home to roost. We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Iroquois, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism — we took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians — babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with Stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Khadafi, his home and killed his child. ...

"We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy — killed hundreds of hard working people — mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowing they'd never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school — civilians, not soldiers. People just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard. America's chickens are coming home, to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

"A white ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism — an ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who's trying to get us to wake up, and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them, and we need to come to grips with that."

Wright was making a point by quoting a white diplomat. He was expressing his opinion. I recognize that many Caucasians, accustomed to the comparatively staid nature of mainstream white churches, may have problems with a man wearing a dashiki, speaking with a booming voice and gesticulating wildly. In a video, such a man could appear threatening.

But in reading that quote, it's a valid argument, whether you agree or not. Yes, it threatens our view that the United States is always in the right, and that "collateral damage" is sometimes necessary to spread good in the world. (President Bush basically said that the other day on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.) But it's a view that is increasingly untenable, and in our hearts we know it.

You may read the full text of the sermon and still come away thinking Wright is evil, but you owe it to yourself to get more than a video bite. And to show that there is more to Pastor Wright that meets the eye, you might want to read the text of "Audacity of Hope," the 1990 sermon showing the side of Wright that inspired Barack Obama's book of the same title.

In a defense of Wright in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Martin Marty — a (white) professor emeritus at the University of Chicago School of Divinity who attends Trinity United Church of Christ— also takes a wider view:

"In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United States Marine Corps. After three years as a Marine, he chose to serve three more as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House commendations."

That doesn't sound like somebody who hates America.

Marty acknowledges and, like Obama, criticizes some of Wright's more fantastic beliefs, such as the government having a role in spreading AIDS (just as white evangelists like Pat Robertson believe AIDS is God's punishment for gays). "Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet."

I am not a drum-beater for religion in politics. It seems nobody can run for election any more without proclaiming their born-again (and mostly Christian) bona fides. This whole Wright episode is an example of the harm that can cause.

In the nastiness that historically has marked American politics, it would be too much to expect any candidate to adopt the Golden Rule. Nonetheless, by the time this election is finished we'll probably end up despising them all.

Newstradamus

Times-Standard Editor Rich Somerville reflects upon the changing world of news

Saddle up and smear

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