[lbo-talk] Jeremiah Wright or Wrong?

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Tue Mar 18 13:22:38 PDT 2008


On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 2:49 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Mar 18, 2008, at 2:04 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > I wish somebody would explain to me the outrage over what Jeremiah
> > Wright
> > has said in his sermons.
>
> C'mon, you live in the USA. You know you cannot say things like "god
> damn America" or talk about racism in any but the most anodyne terms
> or suggest in any way at all that U.S. foreign policy had anything to
> do with 9/11 without facing a shitstorm of criticism followed by
> total social ostracism. I can't believe you have to ask the question.
>
> Doug
>

Because Doug I believe in asking obvious questions! Maybe the questions is even stupid! I freely admit it. I have no special insight here. (I actually had not seen the "goddamn" remark probably because the NYT is too prudish to publish it and the topic of Wright is new to me. Which is another reason why I was asking the question..) But thank you for telling me that my question doesn't even deserve an answer or shouldn't even be asked in the first place because otherwise I wouldn't have known. Your answer. though, as usual, is enlightening.

So do you see any reason to defend Jeremiah Wright?

But the one question I was dumb enough to ask first was not the whole point of my post. Since you couldn't suffer yourself to read what I actually said and only read the first line you actually missed my other (no doubt stupid) questions.

What I was wondering is not why liberals must condemn Wright. This seemed to me to be obvious. But why is what Wright says outside of the political spectrum altogether? Has anyone, any intellectual in the mainstream defended him at all? Unlike with Farrakhan there seems to be something worth-while defending here.

I was also wondering if any leftists or anybody on this list has written anything in defense of Wright or had any thoughts at all on his influence or his politics. So I asked the following questions, not out of spite, or to show anyone up but because Doug, I was genuinely curious. "Has there been any discussion here about Wright that I have missed? Has anyone here heard any of his sermons in full? Has anyone on this list written on the hypocrisy of the demand for Obama to reject Wright?"

But, maybe, you ignore these questions because for some reason that I am unable to comprehend they are also out of line.

Just as a change of pace I thought some people who spend their time in Obamaphobia might want to come to the defense of the man who Obama just rejected, and at the same time enlighten me on some of the cultural ramification I have been missing. For instance I know very little about black liberation theology.

But maybe this is all just too obvious, or no one cares to make the effort.



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