The one thing Obama's speech has done is stop the repetition of the sound bites from his former pastor, which were played endlessly on the cable channels. Now these bloviating chatters on the news networks have some other sound bites to replay. However, many of them replay segments of Barack's magnificient speech only to criticize it or question people like Pat Buchanan (who as far as I can tell has never been right about anything in the political arena) about whether it will help or hurt him politically.
One thing that I find interesting and even scandalous about the media coverage of this entire dust-up is that the media treated the black pastor Jeremiah Wright completely differently than it treated the large number of white right wing preachers who have said equally if not more outrageous things over the years. When Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had that pleasant little conversation in September of 2001 about how America deserved 9/11 because of the behavior of its citizens, it was replayed a number of times, but not nearly as many as times as the words of Jeremiah Wright. And Robertson and Falwell continued to be commentators on the cable networks long after that little interchange. No one asked anyone who sat in their churches or universities to disavow their words. No one asked political candidates to distance themselves from them, and in this election season, Mitt Romney proudly stood next to Robertson to receive his endorsement. At that time, no one questioned Romney's judgment, mostly because the American right wing, biased as it is against Mormons, were all too happy too see Romney genuflect before one of their mad preachers.
And how about McCain's embrace of John Hagee, the man who gets thousands of Americans to dance in the aisles in support of Israel (in order to bring about the End Times in which the Jews will be massacred), and who describes the Catholic Church as a "whore?" Hagee also reportedly blamed Hurricane Katrina on a gay pride parade that was to be held in New Orleans the week after the hurricane struck. This is some pretty crazy stuff, yet we do not see or hear these sound bites repeated over and over, with McCain asked to denounce them.
And how about McCain's embrace of Rod Parsley, who not only rejects the separation of church and state, but also said that America was founded to destroy Islam? Why do we not hear these sound bites over and over?
Because there is a double standard.
Because if you are a Democrat, your religious affiliation is somehow suspect, your preachers somehow over the top. And if you are a black Democrat, it is even worse. Recall, if you have ever had the stomach to listen, how Rush Limbaugh sarcastically exaggerates and thus mocks the word "Reverend" whenever he invokes the name of Jesse Jackson.
Because if you are a Republican, it doesn't matter how crazy your pastors are, how insane their rantings, as long as they wear a flag pin, love war, and claim to want the Christian Church (well, only the right kind of Christian Church) to rule over America. If you are a Republican and an evangelical, you can apparently say and do anything you want.
Because Republicans think they have a monopoly on religion and they own God. They claim to know the mind of God, to speak for God, and to pass judgment in God's name. The arrogance is mind-boggling.
And the press has bought into this. The press barely criticizes Republican religious rantings, because, well, you just don't do that. Republican preachers are exempt from media criticism.
Listen to the speeches of John Hagee and compare them to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright. Hagee has said just as many if not more outrageous things, yet white anger is not as verboten as black anger, even the anger of a black minister.
The anger of white Republican ministers is godly. The anger of black Democratic ministers is satanic and unpatriotic.
Never mind that the role of a prophet is to afflict the comfortable. Never mind that the United States of America, with its history of violence, arrogance, and intervention in areas of the world where it has no business intervening, sometimes needs affliction.
Never mind. No matter how accurate they may be, no matter how gifted or skilled, blacks must be put in their place – black preachers and black candidates.
And now that Barack Obama has not been put in his place, now that he has shown he can rise above the fray and give a different kind of speech, conservatives are rushing to manufacture new reasons to condemn him. Rush Limbaugh insists he is now the "black candidate," implying that being the black candidate will doom his chances. Is that not overtly racist?
If this whole thing (from the endless replay of Wright's remarks to the critique of Obama's speech) doesn't smack of racism, I don't know what does. And how about the fact that while the media was pouncing on Obama for words his minister said, the words of the white candidate, words that showed a profound ignorance of foreign affairs (McCain repeated several times the obviously false claim that Iran is training al Qaeda, until Joe Lieberman finally leaned over and told him he was mistaken) were glossed over? Is the obvious ignorance of the Republican candidate less meaningful than the angry words of a candidate's preacher? Apparently so. Republicans are allowed to be ignorant of the most significant foreign policy facts, but a Democrat whose IQ and knowledge outshines any Republican, is deemed not sufficiently patriotic to be president because his minister said some outrageous things. Underneath this veneer, however, the reality is as Rush Limbaugh hints, that to some Obama is deemed unacceptable for the presidency simply because he is black.
We may not have white drinking fountains and black drinking fountains any more, but we definitely still have white preachers and black preachers, white candidates and black candidates, and the black preachers and black candidates are still treated completely differently than the white candidates.
What a petty, stupid people we are!
