> At 12:22 PM 3/18/2008, Jerry wrote:
>
>
> >(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.
>
>
> Or because you don't have a tv. It was all over the place.
I have decided that it is partially about putting Obama through the proper degradation ritual.
But first let me say that Dennis you are exactly right. It's because I don't own a t.v.... Which is why I hoped some people (like Doug) could explain to me what the whole hullabaloo was about. I had not listened to the radio in the last few days but listening to the radio today I notice that Wright sounds "angry". The words are different on paper than over the air. It is as if black anger is offensive in itself. (I heard his words and I wanted to say "Go, man, Go!") But I have been to a few black churches in my life and Wright has not said anything that practically every single black preacher I have ever heard hasn't said, if they are political at all. If you condemn Wright I think you have to condemn practically every "left" black preacher.m (It is still possible that I haven't heard "the worse" of him being divorced from reality as I am.)
What shocks me most is that "'white' intellectuals" and news reporters either, (1) have had their ears clogged and have never heard a black preacher of this sort or, (2) are willfully deaf to the words of African Americans, if (3) they have never heard such phrases before. Listening to NPR I think that it is all a lie. The reporters have heard these words before. They are feigning shock over words that are really not that shocking. (I think this is what I was getting at in my first post which Doug so easily dismissed as a stupid question.) The mainstream media has heard this before and they are forcing the issue to prove something about themselves and Obama.
It is a game that they are playing and Obama is playing and playing it well. What is the point of the game? Obama needs to go through "the ritual." He passed the Farrakhan ritual too easily so he needs to prove himself with a ritual that proves he is not a sleeper agent, a crypto-radical or a cryto-muslim or whatever. He has to prove he is "white" enough and "American" enough to be "real". He has go through the ritual of degradation (by displaying his true "soul" or his true "mask"); he has to go through the ritual of separation (from the traditions of black politics); and he has to go through the ritual of denunciation (of anyone who might not be a true [white] "American").
Also over NPR just now I have heard commentators describe Wrights sermons as "racially divisive." They have described it so at least six times by my count. And yet to my ears what he has said is not so divisive. Or let me put it this way. It seems to me racially divisive to disagree with Wright on some issues. The U.S. supported state terrorism in South Africa. If you disagree with this statement then you must support South African apartheid. I don't really see much "controversy" or divisiveness in such a statement.
On the other hand for our intellectuals it is inconceivable that anyone who can subscribe to the statement "the U.S. supports state terrorism" should win wide recognition. So I understand the "fear" that the main stream media displays on this topic.
So thank you Dennis and Dwayne (and Doug), both, for provoking me to begin to figure out this confusing stuff. In order to guess at anything I have to realize how much all I don't know and am simply not "getting."
Jerry
<http://www.kslounge.com/blog/2008/03/08/859>