Pulpit Fiction: Why Wright is Wrong for Obama and Us

Humor and Harm: It is easy (and appropriate) to laugh at the absurd words of Jeremiah Wright, but it is frightening to consider the harm that those words do. It is especially depressing to know that Barack and Michelle Obama, and their two young daughters, listened to this man’s hate-filled, negative, divisive rantings for years and years.

Today, I spoke with a local citizen, I’ll call him Jim, who lost his 25-year job at a local mill and now must drive a cab to feed his family. All he could talk about was his disbelief that Barack Obama could sit in those pews for 20 years and listen to Wright’s ravings. (As Christopher Hitchens asks in his new Slate article, “What can it be that has kept Obama in Wright’s pews, and at Wright’s mercy, for so long and at such a heavy cost to his aspirations?”)

Jim and a female co-worker said they’re truly afraid to have Barack Obama in the White House, given his poor judgment. They also expressed great distrust of Michelle Obama, who they’ve seen in interviews and disliked immediately. It is therefore interesting that Hitchens suggests that it was Michelle’s influence that kept Barack in those pews for so long. The subtitle of Hitchens’ article is “IS MICHELLE OBAMA RESPONSIBLE FOR THE JEREMIAH WRIGHT FIASCO?”

So: If Jim, a near-destitute cab driver in the Pacific Northwest, and Christopher Hitchens, an East Coast-based affluent and classically educated writer of note, can come to the same conclusion about Obama’s poor judgment as well as his wife’s negative influence, it’s a sure bet that millions of other Americans are also thinking the same thing. It’s also near certain that NOTHING Obama says from now on will affect their apprehensions about the man or his wife.

It seems that everyone gets the problem that makes Obama unelectable

Well except those insulated pundits who cling to their fantasy of an Obama presidency, or those too young to know better. As Charles Krauthammer said today on Brit Hume’s panel, anyone who’s been around the block — i.e., anyone but the very young — knows enough not to buy Obama’s weak and self-serving excuses.

Then, there’s another important topic that has not received sufficient attention, and that is the devastatingly negative effect that Wright’s rantings have had on his parishioners. Laugh at the poster on the left, then consider the harm that Jeremiah Wright has wrought on the psyches of those who’ve heard his divisive rants for years:

From “Jeremiah Wright’s Wider Toll” in the Washington Post by Gary MacDougal, chairman of the Illinois governor’s Task Force on Human Services Reform and is the author of “Make a Difference: A Spectacular Breakthrough in the Fight Against Poverty”:

“It is easy to be outraged by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s abhorrent remarks, whether accusing our country of willfully spreading AIDS or being deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And, yes, Sen. Barack Obama should have spoken out forcefully much sooner … But Wright has done more, and worse, than tarnish Obama’s presidential campaign.

“Consider the corrosive effect Wright and others like him have on their communities as they rob thousands of listeners of the American dream: hope that through their hard work they can have better lives.

“Imagine getting up each morning to go to work in a society that doesn’t want you, doesn’t respect you and seeks to hold you back. Your spiritual leader has told you this, after all.”

Mr. MacDougal continues:

With powerful rhetoric, Wright has asserted, for instance, that white America sees black women as useful only for their bodies. If this is the message you got from your mentor, would you expect that you could succeed? Would you try very hard, if at all?

Through my work with the Illinois governor’s task force on human services reform and its efforts to reduce welfare dependency, I have encountered misguided community “leaders” like Wright who tell their followers, for example, that the job market is stacked against them and that the jobs that are available aren’t good enough — that they are entitled to more. The underlying message: You can’t win because of who you are, regardless of what you do.

I have attended positively focused black church services, and I know that the Rev. Wright does not speak for a monolithic black church.

This is worth reading in full: “Jeremiah Wright’s Wider Toll.”

It is the most poignant repudiation of Jeremiah Wright that I have read — and I’ve read a few.