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.)

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.

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.

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.