Wrighting the Ship
April 30th, 2008
Nice to see that just as Obama manages to bail out the water from trumped up gaffes and stories, the Reverend Wright is there to piss on his boat again. It’s also exciting to hear that my favorite would-be Senator can now look forward to being branded a tax-dodger for the entire election. Obsidian Wings has some pretty good posts on Wright’s descent into narcissism. Damn, this is gonna be a long election.
At least on the bright side, Hillary is siding with McCain on the notion of having a ridiculous gas tax holiday (read: oil subsidy billed as consumer relief). So maybe we can focus on how Obama hates hard-working Americans so much that he won’t even cut them a break at the pump, instead of how he’s a Hamas-loving Muslim/Black liberation Christian who dines on white babies and hard-boiled Jews with Louis Farrakhan.
Just for some perspective, Henry “Don’t Call Them War Crimes” Kissinger is the voice of sanity in McCain’s cadre of foreign policy advisors. He is literally one of the saner, less neo-conny folks in the bunch. That might be something of a bad omen for what kind of president Long John would be. But at least McCain knows better than to be honest with the American people.
Ok, that’s over. Don’t call me bitter, though. That would be condescending. I’m going to go cling to my autographed copy of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” now.
Entry Filed under: Politics
6 Comments Add your own
1. Mark Stamas | April 30th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Maybe I am a “half full” kinda guy but this post is a real downer man. You are using all the words the they want you to. Think like a search engine, strip away the context and all that is left is the perpetuated out of context words.
We need to be raising consciousness about the HOW of the WHAT we need as a nation and a globe.
Obama is just that. The answer to a long forgotten question.
All the rest. . . sound and fury signifying nothing.
2. Devin | April 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Sure, it’s a downer post. I was venting. I don’t think these things say much at all about Obama and Franken, other than that they appear to be uncharacteristically honest when bad shit goes down. I have more of a problem with what Wright said over the last couple days than anything I’ve heard from him in the past.
I think there’s no question that Wright’s new publicity tour makes it much more difficult for Obama to carry Indiana, which might have helped end the Democratic Primary. I think the Democrats will more than likely win the presidency if Obama wraps up the nomination soon, and they will more than likely lose if this goes all the way to the convention. This story has serious electoral significance, and to the extent that I actually think Wright is making some intellectually dishonest claims about himself and black America, it seems worth addressing.
Obviously we should devote more time to talking about the things we need to do as a nation than complaining, so if you don’t want to read my rants when the horse race turns sour for a spell, feel free to spend your time doing something else.
I could say the possibility of sequestering huge amounts of carbon is more important than basketball, and vow not to watch or play the sport again, but I’m not going to. There will always be more pressing things than whatever I’m doing at the moment, and it’s important not to lose sight of that. But I don’t think that in itself makes a compelling argument for refusing to attend to any lesser issues.
Assholes will always demonize angry black men who speak out against institutionalized racism and injustice and assholes caricature the cadence and gesticulations of these men. And that’s condescending, it’s racist and it’s oppressive. But when guys like Cornel West and Jeremiah Wright use this preacher’s cadence as proof in itself of divine moral authority or to push weak arguments or exaggerate the profundity of basic statements, I think that is shameful and reprehensible. I don’t think it represents everything they stand for, I don’t think it means they aren’t intelligent people, but when I see them doing it, it pisses me off. They’re on notice.
3. Mark Stamas | April 30th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Oh yeah. For sure. But I’m not getting through. When you say anything at all in support of the idea that Obama is vulnerable you simply feed that idea. He is not. He will be President and all of this is the struggle of the status quo attempting to kick and scream in reaction to the inevitable.
Blast Wright, just don’t say “this has an effect on Indiana” because it surely doesn’t. The fact that a 25 year old articulate journalist hoop crazy punk thinks that what some freak preacher with a god complex says has any effect on voters in a primary election is a product of the very broken system within which we live.
You perpetuate that system by not bucking it and saying the truth like “the average voter doesn’t give a crap what some whack black hate monger thinks of Obama”.
Now that would move consciousness in the right direction.
Don’t make me do it.
4. Devin | April 30th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Ok, agreed. Haha, preacher with a god complex. That’s rich.
5. Barry Bussewitz | May 1st, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The analyst on NewsHour yesterday, April 30, made it clear that if the gas tax holiday is actually done, it will maybe lower gas prices 3 cents a gallon. The rest would go to . . . the OIL COMPANIES!
I saw a good segment of Rev. Wright’s “God Damn America” sermon on Bill Moyers’ show. Had I been in the church audience, in the context of the Black Church as I have known it from living in a Pittsburgh ghetto (Homewood-Brushton, profiled during the Pennsylvania primary as worse than when I was there in VISTA in 1969), I woulda been inspired. If folks had been clapping or cheering, I woulda done it too.
In fact I had a serious mind to show that whole Moyers program, including the sermon segment, in class. Many of my students would have appreciated it, most would have at the very least “gotten” it, and some would have gained new insight into America. One of my students recently wrote that growing up in the Philippines, she had never studied U.S. history. Now she is afraid to because of what she’ll find out; she wants to keep thinking of America as the land of freedom and opportunity and hope. Obama captures that American desire, so strongly manifested in our immigrant population. In the right context, Rev. Wright can connect the history to that hope, but you have to be in the space to hold both at the same time — like in the spiritual congregation of a Black church.
I wish Rev. Wright would’ve stopped there, after the Bill Moyers show. (Or sooner?)
That fucking gas tax holiday, isn’t that the best candidate going for pitifullest pandering by these candidates? I want a candidate who expects America to have some friggin’ maturity! (Does pitifullest have one l or two? It’s not in my spell-check.)
6. Mark Stamas | May 7th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Where’s punk boy after Obama clinched?
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