Letter from America
Guilt by association
RIGHT-wing Republican television and radio talk show hosts were ecstatic on Friday, March 14! Finally they had found Barack Obama's fatal flaw, a crack in his armour -- in the person of his pastor Jeremiah Wright.
They had been peddling videos of Rev. Wright's fiery sermons suggesting that the US brought the September 11 attacks on itself and the government had a role in spreading the Aids virus in the black community. Now the videos were on YouTube getting millions of hits.
Since Rev. Wright has been Barack Obama's spiritual mentor for twenty years, had married Barack and Michelle, and baptised their two girls, Wright's opinions are Obama's, they argued. "This is the end of Obama's quest for the presidency," prophesied Fox News's Sean Hannity, a sentiment echoed by talk radio's uber-hatemonger Rush Limbaugh.
In his Sunday sermon after September 11 Wright suggested: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
In a 2003 sermon he complained: "The government gives blacks drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
In a sermon last December he argued: "Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger."
Calling Wright his spiritual confidant and the inspiration behind his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama addressed the controversy head on: "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue."
He has looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, Obama said, adding he has been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor's comments when he had not been present. Without repudiating Wright the man, Obama described him as "like an uncle" who says something that he disagrees with and must speak out against. He also said he expects his political opponents will use video of the sermons to attack him.
He is absolutely right on that. Independent 527 groups that "swift boated" John Kerry in 2004 will hammer Obama with negative ads invoking Pastor Wright. Hannity and O'Reilly (Fox News,) and Limbaugh promised to paint Obama as unpatriotic and unfit to be president because of his association with the pastor.
Fiery sermons are the staple of black churches. With an excruciating history of slavery, lynching, and discrimination, African-American experience is vastly different than white American experience.
In 1853, freed slave-statesman Frederick Douglass refused to speak at a function on July 4, American Independence Day, saying that blacks had little to celebrate on that day. Television commentator David Gergen, a Professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton said that many of his African-American students tell him the same thing about July 4 today.
They are not less patriotic, cautions Gergen; they are patriotic on a different plane. They want white America to acknowledge the indignity, torture, lynching and discrimination that it had inflicted on the blacks for centuries. Rev. Wright embodies such hurt, bitterness and grievances, Obama said.
Obama on the other hand, wants to get beyond the politics of victimhood and usher in a post-racial era of change and hope. Bigots like Hannity, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh are not interested in blacks' genuine grievances; they want blacks to be patriotic on white America's terms.
On February 26, Senator McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with his "spiritual guide" Rev. Rod Parsley. In his book Silent No More, Parsley claims that Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" predicated on "deception."
The Muslim prophet Muhammad, he writes, "received revelations from demons and not from the true God." And he emphasises this point: "Allah was a demon spirit." Parsley does not differentiate between violent Islamic extremists and other followers of the religion:
"There are some, of course, who will say that the violence I cite is the exception and not the rule. I beg to differ. I will counter, respectfully, that what some call 'extremists' are instead mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam."
Has Senator McCain condemned Rev. Parsley's incendiary remarks? No. Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Fox News and their ilk? Absolutely not! This is the magnitude of hypocrisy Obama is up against.
McCain surrogates and Fox News will fan the flames of Rev. Wright's comments to destroy the candidacy of Obama because they believe that Hillary will be easier to beat in November. In open primaries Limbaugh asks Republicans to vote for Hillary. In Mississippi 24% of Hillary's votes came from Republicans.
Here is the irony. "Patriots" like Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Cheney never picked up a gun to defend America. These "chicken hawks" could not run away from combat fast enough. The only time they pick up a gun is to shoot an unarmed duck! On the other hand, the "unpatriotic" blacks, only 13% of the population constitute 30% of the US military and are disproportionately dying in Iraq. Rev. Wright, the "traitor," is a former US marine who put his life on the line to defend America!
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments