(From Julio's link):
"But here I was, able to stay with him lockstep as we moved from topic to topic. . . . He felt comfortable asking me questions that were postmodern, post-Enlightenment and that college-educated and graduate school-trained people wrestle with when it comes to the faith. We talked about race and politics. I was not threatened by those questions." ... Wright
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The minute I heard Wright open his mouth, I thought, well, damn, that's more like it. He sounded like Ron Dellums used to back in the day.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Obama wanted to pick up on how to approach very liberal views in ordinary language from Wright and that is precisely what he got. Only he massauged them to suit the liberal white crowd with their ambiguities and timidity over race and US history.
When Wright re-surfaced, he must have decided to hell with all this fancy dancing, I am not going to take this media cappolla about my church in silence.
I heard a few cuts from his speech before the press club in DC. He sounded great. No mincing words, coming back at you, loud and strong. Right on. Obviously the tv media were not used to guys with something to say and not afraid to say it.
Obama's denouncement was shameful and it was the wrong thing to do for all sorts of tactical reasons. It showed blood in the water.
A better approach would have been a sit down session with Wright and have it out with him before cameras as a conversation, say with Moyers (architypial media nerd, but at least friendly and receptive to the issues and sides of this politics and faith business---it's his mainstay.) They are both smart articulate guys. They could have debated their respective positions and gained a tremendous audience, black, chicano, and white---because all kinds of vaguely liberal people struggle between these poles. (I didn't see the Moyer's interview last Friday...too plastered after a long week. Hopefully it was good.)
They could still pull it off, just maybe... Say, a hand shake and a hug, then pull up chairs and talk about it. You could probably get half the world glued to the tube to watch something like that. Screw the right and idiots who haven't made up their mind. Toujour l'audace, toujour l'audace!
CG