« Ball and chain | Main | Castor dicitur a castrando »

Wright: So right

By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday April 29, 2008 08:33 PM

Poor Barack has finally had to pony up his Sister Souljah moment and repudiate Jeremiah Wright. What delights me in this story is how much more sensible Wright seems than Obama. Here's Wright:
Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God.

[On whether he should apologize for shouting in a sermon "God damn America" for its treatment of minorities]:

"God doesn't bless everything. God condemns some things.... God damns some practices and there's no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done.

[On his previous suggestion that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities]:

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."

[On what he meant by his sermon in which he said "God damn America"]:

"When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government, a particular government and not to God, that you're in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie.

[On the sermon he gave after Sept. 11 saying "America's chickens are coming home to roost" after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan and "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans"]:

"The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.... When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public.... Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from The New York Times called me, a 'wack-a-doodle.'"

Now here's poor Barack, worn down into mere flag-waving platitude -- O what a noble mind is here o'erturned!
But when [Pastor Wright] states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses.

They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans....

I have spoken and written about the need for us to all recognize each other as Americans, regardless of race or religion or region of the country....

Of particular interest, I think, is the righteous horror about Wright's AIDS theory. It reminds me of that scene in Dumbo -- the movie -- when the mouse walks into a mean-spirited gossip-fest among a group of elephants, and the pachyderms go crazy. The rearing! The trumpeting! The flaring ears, the writhing trunks, the glaring, horror-struck eyes!

Personally, I think Wright is mistaken about the facts on this one. But so? Lots of people believe things that other people think are mistaken, or even a bit nutty. Those Christians, with their God on a stick! Those Jews, with their God preoccupied by foreskins and diet! Those Muslims, with their forty-seven virgins! We're supposed to plotz every time we hear something we don't agree with?

But it's not enough for Barack to register his disagreement. No, he has to be "offended," and has to say that everybody else should be offended too -- or maybe they're not really "Americans".

Wright rather plainly lays out the core of the problem in admirably clear words:

"Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything."
He might have added: based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, based on Kissinger's green light for Suharto's massacres, based on the Phoenix Program, based on Madeleine Albright's "well worth it" infanticide in Iraq, based on Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay -- based on all these well-established, historical facts, what reasonable person could possibly deny that our government, or any government if it comes to that, is capable of any enormity in the right circumstances?

The funny thing is that the public understands this quite well. There are plenty of people out there who think the moonwalk was staged, or that Bush and the Israelis contrived the September 11 attacks, or that Mattress Jack Kennedy was disposed of by the CIA. Factually, I think they're mistaken about each of these assertions. But you gotta applaud their skepticism about the Official Version.

It's not Joe Sixpack who's shocked to hear that the Gummint might be up to no good. Joe already believes it. He may not like to hear it from a black guy, but he could get used to that.

No, the people who are shocked, or pretend to be shocked, are respectively the Pwog bien-pensanterie and the manufacturers of consent, AKA the media.

This is unsurprising as regards the media. After all, ideological conformity is their mission. But the Pwogs? What's the matter with them?

I'll tell you: their problem, in a nutshell, is that they don't want Joe Sixpack or his black cousin Jamal F'Shizzle to form any ideas of their own. They'll probably be wrong ideas, you see -- silly notions about AIDS and the World Trade Center.

But the worst of it is, these silly ideas will be their own ideas -- not something they were taught in school, not something peer-reviewed and thoroughly sifted.

And they might even be dangerous.

Comments (11)

Al Schumann:

I wonder if the super-delegates are ready, yet, to be swayed by Senator Clinton's "southern strategy". She's played this hand well so far, given her utterly toxic handicaps, and if nothing else has given other aspirants an education in rabid badger politics. Liberals' propensity for 'flight to safety' in their electoral investment strategy favors her greatly now.

The bromide-slinging senator from the great state of Illinois has inadvertently become an educational object lesson himself. A generation of seekers will rigorously vet their religious mentors for any susceptibility to original, critical or passionately humane thinking.

For people who feel that learning from experience is a worthwhile and valuable thing to pursue, the entire party has managed to provide a tutorial in how to set about throwing (another) election, while raking in enough cash to keep their cretinous campaign apparatchiks faithful to The Cause.

Well, it's been tortured as always, but the Klinton Klan of Little Rockabillies have finally figured out how to shoot this fly on the wall with pa's blusblunder. He's got the exact same relation to black and progressive Dem-sheep as the Gipper had to "Reagan Democrats" -- on paper, he's one of em; but he lit that paper afire many, many moons ago, and now wants to rail against the existence of the paper. Hence, the rank disgusting shit about "the need for us to all recognize each other as Americans" -- i.e., the need for you blacks (and other reform-seekers) to shut the fuck up while I betray you.

This dude's rocketing from "hope" to nightmare #77 in record time, even by Dembot standards. His is to black politics exactly what Reagan was to working-class politics.

Brian:

Can I just say this is an amazing job at summing up the situation? Bravo, Mr. Smith, Bravo!

Anonymous:

"they don't want Joe Sixpack or his black cousin Jamal F'Shizzle to form any ideas of their own. They'll probably be wrong ideas, you see -- silly notions about AIDS and the World Trade Center.

But the worst of it is, these silly ideas will be their own ideas -- not something they were taught in school, not something peer-reviewed and thoroughly sifted. "


mighty fine

these notions
nite mare morphs
come from deep dark
shape shifting id deposits
formed over years

like massive trash dump monsters
forming and reforming
into grotesque animated unities

large truths built
avec bricolage
by each minds global integrators

yup built
right out
of the rusty decaying little retentions
of
every day
dirty little truths and tricks

angryman@24:10:
I'll tell you: their problem, in a nutshell, is that they don't want Joe Sixpack or his black cousin Jamal F'Shizzle to form any ideas of their own. They'll probably be wrong ideas, you see -- silly notions about AIDS and the World Trade Center.

Or the end of the world.

I don't think that the ideas that joe sixpack has, even when wrong, are as bad as the agenda of the elite. Most joe sixpacks I know are satisfied with a livable lifestyle, some education for their kids, and a reasonable amount of downtime before the void arrives.

It's the geopolitical big thinkers that drive the agenda. In my view it's not the rightness or wrongness of joe sixpack as much as the smallness of their ideas and the way they are inertly content.

Al Schumann:

Smallness of ideas and inert contentment are hard to manage on an enforced neoliberal diet in a punitive security state. Keeping quiet about having big plans is not. It's second nature. Fronting a fatuous calm or even apathy is nothing but camouflage. Treachery and condescension from the more fortunate, and from ambitious people trained in enforcement rhetoric, make it smart to keep dreams private.

In contrast, there's nothing more picayune than the grandiosity of the geopolitical big thinkers. Nor do they lack for partisans who are faithful to the point of servility, well educated and highly trained.

Nicholas Hart:

Obama has shamed himself with his latest tirade against Wright. I don't agree with Wright's stance on AIDS--but it is undeniable that the US government has performed medical experimentation on blacks and the poor without their consent. And it is also true that AIDS has become a global pandemic and millions of blacks (especially in Africa) are dying--all for want of some drugs (and contraception) that are cheap to produce but are all but unaffordable because our government grants enormous price protections to sleazy pharmaceutical companies.

Glenn Ford of the Black Agenda Report has an excellent article on Obama's attack on Wright. Everyone should read this article, but especially the pwogs who were bamboozled by Obama's so-called "amazing" speech on race (perhaps amazing by mainstream media standards, but quite tepid and in some instances reactionary by genuine progressive standards).

JJR:

Here's Prof. James H. Fetzer's take on Wright's speech:
(quote)

"..[It] is rather easy to establish that most of [Wright's claims] are either true or at least not obviously false. But if Wright is almost completely right, then something’s wrong with this picture. The evidence suggests that those who are opposed to his candidacy are willing to distort American history and painful truths for the sake of political expedience, a familiar tactic in a new, contemporary guise."

full text here:

http://diatribune.com/what039s-wrong-with-rev-wright

op:


oreo-bama is not now
and never has been
a member of the black nation

that being said up front

his attack on his sadoptive father
jeremiah II
reminds me of
the snitch...the cat food
high yellow journalist snitch ...
the equal opportunity snitch ...
that nailed jesse jackson
to his
" hymie town " line

only this time it was the candidate
that betrayed

i love the figure
father

but
ob had no balls to lose
no real balls balls generate real off spring
real balls produce
real rooted blood fated people
different people
both by blood and choice and
inescapable history

and now
he has no adoptive
black father

now he is a pure self creation
an ...elton john

now ob's has tried to "kill "
his adoptive black father
in cold blood
he may think he;s free to go post race

well there's is no post race politics
maybe post identity politics
post gender politics
but no post race politics not here not yet
now i've claimed all bad things come to an end
in this case apparently ...not yet

ob's with this sterile
man without a color attack
has given race a new birth of freedom


all along
the poor self idloizing fool
took this fantasy product
certain whites have made of him
for a durable personal reality

well oby
its gone poof !!
poof! !!!!!

yet
another bubble pops eh ??

--------------

back in the nambo -ed
late 60's
times were different

those running for president
as a mirage of progressive clean hope
had to be white

had to be
a white white hope
a catholic in the land calvin scurged

a kennedy brother

now ....the mirage has to be black

yes black
not female ...black

but times are different in other ways too

believe me ob's won't get
the great final career move
rfk got made for him
by that
self produced figment
sirhan of san pedro
the self described
" palestinian commando"

no obs will lose
either in august of november
it don't matter much when
and then he'll just ... stick around
and around and around
slurp the Inc-ster's
potato soup
at best
he'll become a ... charcoaled McGovern

op:

"weird hypothetical particles strangelets,
could transform the Earth
almost instantly
into a dead, dense lump"

laputa mon amour !!!!

couldn't happen to a better biosphere

op:

glenn ford
notices this obama self profecy

if i lose it will be thru some political mistake of mine along the way

not my race

how delphic

it was a political mistake
after his big speeech
in the city of brotherly love
instead of leaving wright
to go about
his apocooolyptic snizzle

ob's tried to stab him in the chest

okay
turn your back on him
like prince hal
at his ascension
turned his on falstaff
but
why public pillory ????

u have now tied him
and the black nation
to your self ...till november
from here in out
you'll travel as one
but
like your two counter pulling
jack asses
straining to get away from each other
but
forever tied
to the same tether

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Tuesday April 29, 2008 08:33 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Ball and chain.

The next post in this blog is Castor dicitur a castrando.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31