Jeremiah Wright Takes Over the Election

Kennedy: "Hey Osama, hea's my plan. We throw Wright in the trunk of my cah and then we drive him off the bridge. No questions isked"

Obama: Great! Do you know any bridges?"

Kennedy: "I got it covahed."


Make no mistake about it. Jeremiah Wright is back on stage and enjoying every minute of it. Not being satisfied with 15 minutes of fame, the radical pastor is taking over the Democratic Primary and making himself the number one issue. Subsequent to his interview with the sympathetic left winger, Bill Moyers, Wright appeared over the weekend before the Detroit Chapter of the NAACP and followed that up with an appearance before the National Press Club in Washington today. In the process, he is virtually destroying the Obama campaign.

Since Wright and his supporters have complained about people condemning him based on soundbites that were excerpted out of entire sermons, I tuned in to last night's CNN coverage of his entire talk before the NAACP. It seemed only fair. Now that I have heard an entire speech, I have come to this conclusion:

The man is a racist and a nut-as I had thought. While he was able to play warm and fuzzy to Moyers' softballs, he came across in Detroit and Washington as an arrogant buffoon and a total jerk. At the National Press Club, he treated the young lady who had to act as moderator in a condescending and humiliating manner.

Some of Wright's Detroit speech was actually interesting. He made a couple of valid points, namely, that different cultures should be considered not as deficient, but simply as different. He also made the point that different cultures have different learning styles. That is also true.

As someone who teaches English to students from all over the world, I have learned that different cultures from different parts of the world do indeed have different learning styles.

For example, our Arab students, who come from a strong oral tradition, typically arrive here in America with better speaking and listening skills than most Asian students, who come with a better grasp of grammar. Most of the large Asian societies like Japan, China and Korea emphasize rote memorization of grammar rules. By the same token, most Asian students come from learning environments where class interaction is rare. The professor lectures, the students listen and take notes. Questions and comments from students are generally not part of the program-in contrast to the American teaching/learning style. This is not to say that the American style is better; it is just different.

Where Dr Wright lost me is when he started explaining to his NAACP audience how whites and blacks are different in being dominant on different sides of the brain. Now this is beyond my expertise, but I am very skeptical that left-brain dominance vs right-brain dominance breaks down along racial lines. There are white people who are right-brain dominant and others who are left-brain dominant.

In defending blacks against charges that they speak deficient English, he mocked the accents of the Kennedy family, from JFK to Teddy Kennedy.

Wright also spoke in mocking terms of the differences by which white people and black people worship in church.

Another whopper was his opening statement that the NAACP was not a partisan organization, neither Republican nor Democratic. Well, officially not, but in reality, the NAACP, once a great organization that did great work before and during the Civil Rights Era, is now an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party. Roy Wilkins would be turning in his grave.

In front of the National Press Club, he claimed that attacks on him were really attacks on black churches. He then launched into a litany of political observations about race, America and Israel. He said he had told Obama that if he got elected president, he (Wright) was coming after him (Obama) because the American government "grinds people under". When questioned about his patriotism, he quoted his 6 years in the Marines, comparing himself to people like Dick Cheney and other critics who used their status to avoid military service. (Fair enough, but he wasn't talking about this critic because I also served in the military.)

Yet, this is the same man who told the unquestioning Bill Moyers that he never talked politics with Obama because Obama was a politician, and he was a pastor.

Jeremiah Wright, in spite of being a Man of God, is nothing more than an opportunist who is putting himself on center stage-and to hell with Obama's campaign. Wright is also one who hates-notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary. This is a man who says that the American Government deliberately introduced drugs and AIDS into the black community. That, in my view, makes him a nut. He is educated enough to know better. He described 9-11 as a case of the chickens coming home to roost. He rails about "Rich White People" in his sermons, but is building a 10,000 sq foot home (courtesy of his church, I wonder?)in a wealthy suburb of Chicago so he can live with "Rich White People". That makes him a hypocrite.

Wright can no longer complain that someone is taking his words out of context in "sound bites". He is what he is. His words are the same as his idol, Louis Farrakhan.

Unfortunately for Obama, Wright is not about to go away. For Rev. Wright, it is all about Jeremiah Wright, and he is going to go on trashing his country throughout the campaign. Do I feel sorry for Obama? Not really. He chose this pastor and this church 20 years ago, and now, in the words of Dr Wright, "the chickens are coming home to roost."

It is sad how this campaign, which started out as one that would "bring us together", is now only further dividing us. Much of the blame for that must go to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.