Political analysis
God Damn The Right
- By Chronically Pissed
- March 24, 2008
Far be it from me to defend a preacher, but the uproar over Jeremiah Wright is a shameful, cynical circus. His words are being condemned from the right with the worst kind of disingenuous indignation while the left pussies out again and allows the bastards to get away with it. Allow me to elucidate this mess…
The right-wing blowhards who are most upset about the scandalous YouTube clips they’ve watched are pretending to be deeply wounded by Wright’s perceived racial divisiveness. Never mind that they’ve never been within 30 miles of a black church; that they cannot even begin to place his words within anything resembling context; that they don’t know the first god damned thing about having racism directed at their people. None of this matters to them. They’ve found an opportunity to pounce and jubilantly announce that white people are the victims of bigotry too! See?!
Wrong, assholes. Whereas America seems to have settled into something resembling a reluctant cease-fire in the battle of the sexes, we remain hugely fucked-up when it comes to race. America has not yet given a generation of African Americans the tools needed to rise above the station we bestowed upon them. We kept them in chains, physical and legal, until 1865 and 1964, respectively, while white Americans spent three hundred years getting extraordinarily wealthy. Then we had the fucking balls to say, “Well, now you’ve got everything you wanted. I guess there’s nothing to complain about anymore. Best of luck!” It would be hysterical if it wasn’t such a sick fucking joke – watching all these right-wing dickheads pretending that they don’t understand the frustration and rage that boils over in black communities. They look at certain aspects of black culture (the staggering number of black men who end up in jail, rap music, the disaffected attitude of the fast food workers they are forced to encounter, etc.) and assume that it speaks for itself, without taking into account that the black culture they are talking about is both a consequence of and response to the oppression they’ve endured since we dragged them over here in the first place.
So when Jeremiah Wright preaches what Barack Obama calls “a social gospel” to a congregation of African Americans who are moving in the right direction while continuing to experience and work through their discontentment, I understand. Besides that, his words simply were not all that offensive. Anyone who pretends not to understand the rhetorical, theatrical device that produced the words “god damn America,” is either full of shit or hopelessly obtuse. Anyone who can’t contextualize Wright’s description of the “U.S. of KKK A.,” where “the government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants [them] to sing ‘God Bless America’,” is completely ignoring the reality of the black experience in America. Anyone who cannot abide any interpretation of history that might implicate America in the Islamic rage that led to 9/11 (while believing that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had it right when they blamed it on the homos, adulterers, and feminists), is just an empty-headed jingoist.
I wish Obama had not felt compelled to distance himself from Wright in his speech on race – unless it was to distance himself from Christianity altogether – or to equate Wright’s remarks with the passively racist remarks of his own white grandmother. I wish he’d had the nerve to stand up and say “No. Sorry. This is bullshit. I will not apologize for the remarks of a dear friend just because you’ve chosen to demonize him. I will not pander to your phony indignation by pretending he said something horribly offensive.” I wish America was ready to hear what needed to be said. All things considered, he probably made the best possible move for his campaign and he was brave enough to embrace Wright while denouncing his allegedly offensive words. Kudos for that, I suppose.
This is all yet another abhorrently duplicitous ploy by the right. No one with half a brain is actually offended by Barack Obama’s association with this man, nor or they actually offended by the man’s words. It is another chapter in the Right’s perpetuation of The Interminable Illusion of Indignation. But this is worse than just pretending to be indignant about MoveOn.org’s General Betray-Us ad. This betrays what little progress America has made in race relations. This episode features the darkest of cynics foisting a maliciously misinterpreted myth upon simpleminded bigots who are being led to feel justified about their inbred hatred of all things non-white. This episode is playing off the bogus fears that have been insinuated about Obama’s secret, Islamic hatred of America. This episode, if successful, would make America indisputably worthy of the damnation it finds so hateful.
I have a horrible, sinking feeling about it all, like it is the beginning of the end for Obama, whether his demise ultimately happens in the primary or in the general election. I think the American people were subconsciously waiting for a convoluted situation that would allow them to express their underlying bigotry in a non-obvious way. This is just such a situation. By attacking Obama’s preacher, by basing their discomfort with Obama on his association with Wright, rather than on their own fundamental discomfort with blacks, they can finally deny the Obama phenomenon while feeling self-righteous about their outward lack of bigotry. The polls are currently beginning to bear this out and I am growing sadder and more ashamed of my country with every dropping poll point.
Finally, will someone please explain to me why it has been accepted as objective fact that Jeremiah Wright’s statements were worthy of the shitstorm that has erupted over them? Everyone, conservatives and liberals alike, have just accepted and perpetuated the apparently obvious fact that his comments were the rhetorical equivalent of a dead hooker in Obama’s trunk, without bothering to examine them in any broader context. Everyone simply moved on to the really important questions, like “Has Obama distanced himself enough from these horrible, detestable, vitriolic, anti-American statements?” or “Will this story continue to haunt Obama?” These are questions that fit neatly into the narrative of the electoral horse race, without contributing an iota to the real discussion about America’s past, present, and future.
I keep watching the YouTube clips thinking that maybe, just maybe, I’ll find something that helps me understand what people are so hysterical about. I just can’t find it. All I see is a fiery social leader channeling and mirroring the very complex emotions that the black community, a community that was legally segregated only 50 years ago, justifiably feels about their country. Wright doesn’t threaten America in his sermons, he calls America on her shit. He challenges her to do better and to come to terms with her past, to understand why her black citizens might still have profound suspicions about her promises of liberty and equality.
Leave it to Mike Huckabee, with whom I disagree on nearly every topic under the sun (including the very origin of the aforementioned orb), to bring some compassion to this debate: “As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement!’ … I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told ‘You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie, you have to go in the back door to go into the restaurant, you can’t sit out there with everyone else, there’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office, here’s where you sit on the bus.’ And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder, and resentment, and you have to just say ‘I probably would too…in fact, I probably would have had…more of a chip on my shoulder.’ “
Are Mike Huckabee and I the only two people in America who see through the bullshit indignation of commentators like Joe Scarborough, who in the same clip wonders incredulously how “Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK.” Would it amaze you to know, Joe, that I work with a woman (in your home state of Florida) who actually said to me recently, “Well, there’s black people and then there’s niggers. I mean, nigger just means ignorant. It’s in the dictionary.” This is a person who is in school to be a medical receptionist. Not glamorous, mind you, but not exactly trailer park material either. Would it surprise you, Joe, to know that there are still many, many people in America who think this way? And yet, in a stroke of staggering irony, she’s exactly the kind of person who is most offended by Wright’s sermons.
My point is that Jeremiah Wright just isn’t all that crazy, as preachers go. Believe me, I think the first mistake is giving a microphone to anyone who has imaginary friends. But preachers say crazy shit every goddamned day. If you want crazy, try on this sermon by McCain’s favorite pastor, John Hagee, preaching that the U.S. State Department is inviting a “bloodbath” from god by pressuring Israel to give up land to the Palestinians. Or better yet, how about this classic, in which Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say that America got “probably what we deserved” on 9/11. You want crazy? Watch THIS and get back to me.
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A freaking men!!
150 days ago by Eureka Springs
I started to say I couldn’t agree more. But In fact I do agree more.
150 days ago by Winter Patriot
It is this kind of rhetoric that is keeping blacks in the ghetto. “God Damn America” should be insulting to every American Black, White, Brown or Green. As long as the black community listens to the “race hustlers” there will this kind of hate. Reverend Wright can preach his brand of ‘black liberation. It’s his right, one he would not have in many African nations.
“Birds of a feather flock together”
He has been Senator Obama’s spiritual mentor and long time friend. That and the Senators failure to condemn the “Black Power” ‘60s liberation, hate whitey, rhetoric reflect poorly on the candidate.
148 days ago by James E. Fish
Good post. As an African American woman, I have been watching the Wright controversy play out with a sinking feeling. The mainstream media has been unwilling to explore the essential truth behind some of the inflammatory statements that Wright made.
145 days ago by Cash