Dayo Olopade is a bright, crisp, young scribbler. I believe that we will hear much more from her. Comparing Wright to thin - skinned CEO's is a brilliant conceit. Clearly Wright did good work but the problem that I have with all of this is that he is such an obvious nutcake and it is also clear that he cares not one whit for Obama's candidacy and hence for the man himself. He demonstrated both propositions amply last week.

Last thoughts? Let's hope so. Anyway, nicely put, Dayo.

Autocratic and narcissistic leaders like Wright prey on the confused and insecure. Their followers tend to be those who crave strong approval. These dependent, approval-craving characteristics are written all over Obama. His long, close, admiring relationship with such a man continues to be a major disqualification for the presidency.

PC:

Fortunately Hillary Clinton never associated with anyone unsavory in her life time - especially not someone who preys on coworkers and young girls seemingly for sport.

So, how many presidents, do you believe, were perfectly balanced and secure young men in their late 20s?  It's clear that Obama had both a real and a (if you like) "functional: reason for gravitating to Wright back then:  a mentor/father figure, and a credible religious connection for his community work.  Now of course he's got every reason to remove himself from that relationship, which he's done.  A major qualification for the presidency, imo, is Obama's ability -- quite rare in politics -- to admit a past mistake or a wrong approach, and learn from it.  Wish others could do that.

PC -

As I've said before, here, and elsewhere, Clinton supporters play a losing game if they legitimize 'guilt-by-association' attacks.  As they say, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

I remember when I was an intern for journalism. I covered an American educator who was giving a talk at a local church. He had been teaching in Cuba. For most of the talk, and most of our Q&A session afterward, it clear that he was interested in comparing Cuban and American systems of education. Much of what he had to say about Cuba was positive. But it was also clear that the handful of professional journalists, who arrived to late to hear the actual talk, were eager to steer the Q&A session toward long lines and food shortages. I filed my story, trying to capture as accurately as I could what the man was saying and the reaction of the audience. When I read the stories that the professional journalists wrote, they were all focused on what a miserable hell hole Cuba had become.

Media coverage of Jeremiah Wright’s Bill Moyers, NAACP and National Press Club talks this week seem a lot like my internship experience with professional journalists. I don’t think we can understand the world by distorting it.

Having said that, I have also had time to listen and re-hear Wright’s Press Club speech, in light of much that has been written by TNR readers and contributors. My original position was that many readers were missing much because they lacked the social, cultural and historical lens through which African Americans view such speeches. My sense was that Wright was speaking to an intelligent African American audience that knew how to filter and process the speech in the way that others, perhaps lacked.

But the more I listen to the speech the angrier I become; not so much at Wright’s words (which have been greatly distorted in second-hand reporting) but about the performance as a whole. Afterall, there is a discourse that is appropriate for different audience because the intent of communication is to be understood. The National Press Club was not the kind of audience that was appropriate for that kind of discourse. The audience for the National Press Club speech could not appreciate the metaphors, the nuances, or the humor. They took too much too personally and too literally. I think Jeremiah Wright, experienced national figure that he has been for many years, should have known better. He needed to be dull, subdued, get directly to the point; or he shouldn’t have accepted the Press Club invitation at all.

So long as predominately white audience (which was not the physical audience at the National Press Club, but it was the extended audience watching from the balcony and on TV) insists on a narrative that vilifies Wright out of a need to reduce the world to good guys and bad guys – black hats and white hats – then I don’t think they will ever be able to “get” Wright; and they will continue to say that those African Americans who do “get” Wright are locked in a pathological psychology of victimization and divisiveness. I think Wright and his message are much more complicated than people who have commented on him have even begun to understand. I say this as someone who has a bone or two to pick with Wright’s construction of cultural and sociological differences between blacks and whites.

But Wright should pick his audiences more carefully. There are appropriate audiences for different kinds of discourse. He should continue to talk about the prophetic tradition of African American churches. He should continue to distinguish between “difference” and “deficient.” He should continue to talk about his paradigm of “liberation, transformation, and reconciliation.” He should continue to be expected to be mis-interpreted and mis-heard. And he should continue to use his humor and flair for showmanship if that helps to get his message across to his audience. But he should know when to tone it down and to be somber and direct, and when to cut loose. A good communicator can distinguish between different types of audience.

" His long, close, admiring relationship with such a man continues to be a major disqualification for the presidency"

pcc, you want to know.the real disqualifier for the presidecy? Getting a lot less pledged delegates than your opponent.

I like ironyroad's earlier reference to Prince Hal becoming King Henry in Shakespeare's Henry V. I think it helps us to understand this human drama with greater depth than all the non-metaphorical interpretations that I have heard so far. And it makes all of this so very, very human.

Look, Wright is baby and bathwater, not all good or all bad. Obama knows the difference, took the good part - "Audacity of Hope" was a good sermon - and rejects the rest. Smart, moral people know how to do that. Not that pc will give him credit for knowing the time of day, of course.

Dayo Olopade deserves a raise--her writing on Trinity UCC and Pastor Wright has been perceptive where others have been merely descriptive (at best).

One other point about churches that are dominated by pastors with strong personalities: when that pastor steps down, you can lay even odds on a schism within that church over the coming decade. The spiritual inspiration becomes driven by the charisma of the minister rather than by the Gospel, and when that charisma disappears all the petty campaigns that were held in check surge forth.

"church figureheads, especially those with the longevity of a Jeremiah Wright, are not dissimilar from other wildly-successful American entrepreneurs."

Gee, ya think? Who could have guessed?

Wright and Obama each wanted greater share of a particular niche market in southside Chicago. Each succeeded, Obama by latching on to Wright's brand. When it came time for Obama to reposition his product for a national market, he needed to distance himself from the Wright [fire]brand.

Wright of course benefits from controversy and ritualized "betrayal" soap operas involving The Man, into which role Obama as a seeker of white America's approval is inevitably cast. Good for the Wright brand, bad for the (national, post-southside) Obama brand.

So Obama needed to cut him loose-- moany months ago, quietly. This was always obvious, pedestian, uncontroversial. Wright knew it was coming, anyone who watches politics closely knew it was coming, everyone knew this except... Obama, it seems. He's a nice guy, means well, but man, is he ever green.

Naomi88 shoots! She scores!

"I think Jeremiah Wright, experienced national figure that he has been for many years, should have known better."

matthawk, I think it's a massive assumption to say he should have known better, but didn't.  I think he did know, but he proceeded anyhow.  He didn't care what might be the implications for the first black American to get a serious shot at the presidency, and that in itself says volumes.

But there's a deeper problem that I haven't seen mentioned so far.  What I don't think Wright understands is the cultural provincialism of his own "preacher act."  There always was a reflective irony inherent in black vaudeville portrayals of the "Negro Clown" figure -- on the lines of an unspoken message to the white audience:  "if you folks buy this, you'll buy anything!" and a parallel message to the black audience:  "can you believe they buy this?"  But that was theater, not preaching or political rhetoric.  The indispensable distance between himself and his performance was missing, and that says something about Wright's inability to see the danger of standing in the line of fire of his own joke.

Put it this way:  After a generation of Americans has been weaned on Samuel L. Jackson, Dave Chappelle, and Walter Mosely's Easy Rawlins, Wright's performance had all the force and relevance of your elderly uncle telling the same lame jokes at Thanksgiving that he's told for the last 20 years.

Excellent post.  The more "context" we get on the Rev and his acolyte, the more light is shed.

My daughter is pretty apolitical...she does animal rescue and goes years at a time without paying any attention to the news.  She has only peripherally followed this election contest, and is most often exposed to it when she drops by my house and I've got Hardball blaring from the tv, with folks debating and discussing the latest nuances.

Last week she stopped by in the middle of the Rev Wright contremps.... and I had to fill her in with a quick synopsis, illustrated on tv by a parade of images of Rev Wright in full regailia, sermonizing and calling down judgement and Barack, cooly and patiently explaining, apologizing, pleading for context, and finally, reluctantly and sorrowfully but decisively, breaking with has former pastor.

I explained how Rev Wright had been a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding, and how Barack's opponents, from all sides, kept working that wound with flag pins, and old leftists he may have met at PTA meetings, and the "bitter" comments, and as long as he couldn't or wouldn't cut Rev Wright out of his life, he would continue to bleed.  And he just didn't seem to be able (for all the best reasons, like love and loyalty and friendship) to do that necessary, ruthless, political thing.  To his credit as a man but to his detriment as candidate with a bigger agenda.

Then we saw the Rev Wright show from last weekend, with all it's offensive, in your face, obnoxious and compelling, seemingly egotistical glory.  A political provacation and a personal offense that simply could not be apologized for or put into any acceptable "context".  And we saw Barack do what he had scrupulously tried to avoid to doing to over a month.  Cut him off.  (I understand that he has even "defriended" the Rev on his Facebook page.  How final is that in this day and age?)  

And Ruth said, "Maybe that's why Rev Wright did it.  Maybe he did it to help his friend."

Maybe.  Maybe he forced Barack to do what was necessary.  Maybe it was his gift.  If he remains relatively quiet (as he has been since this thing broke last month...) and doesn't pick any more fights, then maybe that's what this was all about.   Forcing Barack to publically break with him in a way that nobody could argue with or object to.  That was particularly crucial with the aftrican american community who were inclined to find lots of truth in the Rev's preaching and disposed to let him defend himself.  But after the weekend's show, all the black folks I know were thoroughly pissed off at the old man, and complete understanding of Barack's repsonse.

Rev Wright acted a fool this last weekend, but we know he is no fool.  Maybe there was method in his madness.

"But Wright should pick his audiences more carefully. "

Let's hope for Obama's sake that his future audiences are limited to his cat, or maybe his bathroom mirror, using a brush as a microphone.

Vanwurs... there are moments I have thought that the whole thing might indeed be "providential" on that level... but, I do not think it was intended by Wright.  And Matthawk... Wright is no fool about tone and audience.  He did know what he was doing by picking so inappropriate an audience to do his schtick on...  The motivation was wounded narcissism and few things are as destructive.  And the end result was to have Prince Hal cut off Falstaff in order to be able to become King Henry.

Perfectly fascinating stuff, humanly, metaphorically and sociologically as well.

Can we all agree... Oh would that it were possible to get religion back out of the public sphere as far as political candidates are concerned?

I have asked this question before, but never got an answer. I keep hearing how nutty Rev. Wright is, so I want to know from the good white folks out there.... What is it that the Rev Wright is saying you find to be nutty? I'd like white folks to consider what accounts for the thousands who listen to Rev Wright and applaud him,  are they all nutty too? I consider myself politically as a classical libertarian, yet as a Black person I can relate to just about everything Rev. Wright has said. Are our (black and white) reactions to Wright indicative of our very different American experiences?

The other day my white friend brought up Rev Wright's AIDS conspiracy. She felt Wright was way out of line especially because he offered no proof.  But given the history of medical apartheid against Black people, Wright's views cannot be totally dismissed. Sure, he should have to offer some proof, yet given the govenrment's penchant for secrecy, how do we know what's hiddne in some classified documents. In any case, checkout the following:

MAD SCIENCE: A horrifying catalog of the centuries-long medical exploitation of African-Americans

www.boston.com/.../mad_science

By Harriet A. Washington

Doubleday, 501 pp., illustrated, $27.95

I vividly remember how I was taught to perform a rectal examination as a second-year medical student in the early 1970s. Our instructor, a respected surgeon, described the technique to a group of eight of us, then took us to a surgical ward to perform the examination for the first time. He found a middle-aged black man, whom he then ordered to submit to examinations from all eight of us. I shall never forget the terror, dismay, and resignation in that man's eyes as he quietly submitted to our probing fingers.

As Harriet Washington demonstrates in "Medical Apartheid," this episode was hardly unusual. In her important new book, Washington, a journalist and ethicist, provides a comprehensive account of the exploitation of black Americans in medical education and research. She proceeds chronologically, discussing such subjects as the use of black bodies in anatomical dissection, the medical care of slaves, the surgical experiments on slaves by physician J. Marion Sims, eugenics, scientific racism, and government-sponsored radiation experiments after World War II using unwitting African-Americans as guinea pigs. The notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study , in which about 600 black men with syphilis were left untreated by the US Public Health Service in an effort to study the natural history of the disease, is seen to be not an aberration but merely the most famous episode in a centuries-long pattern of unethical research behavior with blacks.

Washington demonstrates a changing pattern to the experimental exploitation of blacks. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when racism in the United States was at its most intense, numerous episodes of flagrant maltreatment occurred. After World War II, as racism began to ebb, the worst of these abuses ended. However, African-Americans continued to be overrepresented in clinical trials relative to their percentage of the general population. This largely reflected the fact that academic medical centers drew most of their "clinical material" from their immediate geographic surroundings -- areas that were often heavily black in demographic composition.

In very recent times, Africa has become a new medical laboratory for Western pharmaceutical companies, and Washington ends the book with a number of disturbing examples in which impoverished Africans have been exploited as experimental subjects in ways that echo the use of slaves in antebellum America. In this, parallels can be seen with other recent instances of public health imperialism. For example, as historian Allan Brandt discussed in his 2006 Garrison Lecture to the American Association for the History of Medicine , US tobacco companies have been aggressively marketing and selling their products in Third World countries to offset declines in domestic sales. Such episodes of public health imperialism warrant much further investigation.

Most of the episodes Washington relates are well known among medical historians. Herbert Morais , Linda Clayton , Michael Byrd , James H. Jones, Susan Reverby , Todd Savitt , and others have written splendidly on the various topics discussed in the book, and Washington acknowledges her heavy reliance on these authors. The achievement of the present study lies not in its original research but in how it weaves these well-known events together into a single, powerful narrative -- one that clearly demonstrates that the experimental exploitation of African-Americans was not an occasional aberration but part of a long tradition. The book thus helps explain the deep suspicions of the medical establishment widely found among African-Americans today, as well as the existence of significant contemporary health disparities between blacks and whites.

Washington is to be commended for the balanced tone she uses to discuss such an explosive subject. She writes with justifiable outrage and tells many spell binding tales, but the book is not an anti-medicine polemic. Indeed, she recognizes that the participation of African-Americans in clinical studies is essential, and one of her purposes in writing is to help put these atrocities in the past and to encourage African-Americans to participate in medical research in the future.

Regrettably, the narrative is marred by some jarring factual errors. For instance, the author states that the noted eugenicist Charles Davenport "wrote the National Origins Act of 1924." Davenport played no such role. Similarly, she writes that before the Civil War, "medical students were . . . expected to undergo specialized training during several years, not months, on the clinical floors of hospitals." This statement describes conditions in 20th-century medical education, not the ante bellum era. Fortunately such errors do not undermine the accuracy of the underlying analysis.

What is missing from the book? Largely, the recognition that the ethical problems in medical research pertain not to race alone but to the power relations of scientific medicine. For centuries the urban poor have been exploited as "teaching material" in the great hospitals of every Western country. In America since the later 19th century, similar stories could be told about immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and others who habituated the charity wards of US teaching hospitals. Even medical students, ever fearful of professional repercussions should they offend their professors, have often been forced into being research subjects. Medical research has always tended to take advantage of the powerless and voiceless, whoever they might be. "Medical Apartheid" would have benefited had this larger perspective been brought to the discussion.

Intrinsic to medical research is a moral dilemma: balancing the interests of the individual patient with those of the population, and the rights of the present generation with those of the future. How a society resolves these tensions reveals much about its attitudes, culture, and values. For those seeking to understand these important matters, Washington's fine book is an excellent place to start.

Kenneth M. Ludmerer, MD, is professor of medicine and professor of history at Washington University, in St. Louis, Mo., and the author of "Time to Heal" and "Learning to Heal."

Dayo: Great post.

Annabella, Matthawk: Right on.

VC: Hit the target, as usual.

Odanukil: There is that other saying, those who get blowjobs from interns in the Oval office, should reflect before trying character assassination.  Incidentally, the same goes for the wives of those who get the blow jobs - and who not only stay with the husband, but try to capitalise on the whole Oval Office experience ...

You know, I'm wondering now - sad to say, but with PCC's belching her poison all the time, I can't help it - maybe Starr was right.  Now that we see HER in action (we have all read about the cigar tube and so on about him) is it possible that after looking into the affairs of this couple, he got so revolted that he simply had to get him/them on something, anything?  Was he performing a public service by exposing, ahem, their power-mad cynicism?

Did he perhaps, at some point, wonder, "let's see how far she will go in shielding him", and seeing no end in sight, he just went for the jugular?

I know, I know - it's heresy.  But, really - now that we know, we see, she has no shame nor decency, it is possible that Starr had it right about these two?  This what Hillarious is pushing me into - to embrace Starr as a true public servant ...

Someone please save me ...  

Dayo Olopade is female!  Hah, just goes to show my own inbuilt sexism.  I had guessed based on the name and the evident interest in African affairs that he/she had his/her roots in Africa, but I just without giving it a second thought, I assumed Dayo was a guy.  How embarrassing!

Maybe the whole racism v. sexism contrast that the Democratic primary has brought to the fore deserves further exploration--inside my own cranium, that is.

"Can we all agree... Oh would that it were possible to get religion back out of the public sphere as far as political candidates are concerned?"

Not until you can find a way to separate cause and effect. And that ain't gonna happen.....ever. You can pretend all you please but nonetheless......

An excellent piece, Dayo! If only the rest of MSM could have half of your insight.

lib reformer: I think that is what he was trying to say about himself being a pastor and obama being a politician; theirs never was a Shepherd/Sheep relationship.

PC: speculative and baseless.

matthawk: (w)right on!

ironyroad: I agree, except for motive. I think the point is that for the "unification" to be a success, the average whites and blacks among us will have to become understanding and tolerant  (different, not deficient) of the more outrageous aspects of each others' social norms. (from personal and highly subjective experiences, this tends to be more difficult for white people than black).

wkwami: excellent! thank you for sharing.

naomi88: ROFLMAO

I just wanted to mention that this was a good post, too. Interesting perspective and lots to chew on.

I think it is kind of funny, the fact that I am quite sympathetic to much of what would be characterized as right wing and my provisional support of Obama's candidacy. How is it that I can find myself in an allegiance that would include the likes of many whom I consider only marginally in touch with reality?

Isn't it also possible that Wright is offended by the fact (or at least the apparent fact, as far as we know) that Obama never voiced any such objections to what Wright said face-to-face?  Isn't that something that good friends who respect each other do for each other?  

Shouldn't Obama have said to Wright (his closest spiritual advisor), a LONG time ago, look, Jeremiah, you do a lot of good in the community, but you have to stop spreading lies about the US Government inventing AIDS.  I mean, don't you have enough legititmate gripes, or do you have to go around and make stuff up?  

So the first time Obama has anything bad to say about Wright, he does it with a TV camera in his face, in one of the most important speeches of his campaign.

Classy guy, that Barack.

wkawmi --

"I'd like white folks to consider what accounts for the thousands who listen to Rev Wright and applaud him,  are they all nutty too? I consider myself politically as a classical libertarian, yet as a Black person I can relate to just about everything Rev. Wright has said."

Paranoia.  Paranoia mixed with racial hatred and envy.  Emotions that can strike otherwise rational people at any time, and that can be exploited by hucksters at any time.  

BTW, here is a more balanced view of the Tuskeegee Experiment:  

www.amren.com/.../tuskegee.html

I doubt we have come close to hearing the end of Wright. If Obama loses in North Carolina and loses big in Indiana, maybe he should fall on his sword for the good of the party. I am starting to think that Faux News has seriously misplayed their hand by using Hillary to destroy Obama, because in the end she might end up destroying them. The fact that she will use anyone or do anything in order to secure power, and to the extent that she will do so, I have underestimated its effectiveness. When Fox news and assorted right wingers turn their guns on her she need only highlight their hypocrisy, that just recently they have been praising her but now they are damning her.

I dunno, maybe Obama hasn't developed that killer instinct necessary for this type of politics. Maybe Hillary's string of losses allowed that inner demon to be unleashed, before she was trying to hide that she was a bitch, but now that everyone knows it they can accept it, and she can unleash her demons on the Republicans.

I am starting to think America doesn't want to live in a country without rampant Bush or Clinton hatred.

I have the sense that Hillary would make peace with Obama by offering him the VP, and he would have to take it, and then the real war will begin. It will be Nazi Germany Versus Soviet Russia in its intensity (I am only highlighting the intensity, not calling anyone Nazis or Commies). It will be die Gotterdammerung, heralding the Mayan calendars end of History in 2012.

Quote of the day courtesy Bob Herbert's op-ed in the NYT today:

"Race is like pornography in the United States — the dirty stories and dirty pictures that everyone professes to hate but no one can resist. But I suspect that even porn addicts get their fill sometimes."

buffaloboy, one, you have no idea what private conversations he had with Wright, it was reported that he told him that the reason Wright wasn't invited to the announcement was because he did go over the top too much. You have no idea what other private conversations they did have, and it is presumptious of you to assume you do. Beyond that, I am a Catholic, do you honestly think I go up to my priest and bitch to him about the churches teaching on contraception? or on gays, or on a host of other issues? I disagree with their positions but accept them, and am under no obligation to explain to anyone why I remain Catholic. Apparently you don't believe in freedom of religion, or the right of people to associate with others they disagree with. and of course you are privy to every conversation they ever had simply because you imagined that you did. you are such a classy guy yourself.

but oh no, are you offended? is your itty bitty feewings hurt?

""The “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” as it was officially called, is probably beyond redemption. The standard version of white perfidy probably cannot be displaced any more than the truth about America’s World War II relocation camps can displace the common conviction that they were “concentration camps” in which Japanese were forcibly interned."

gurdieff55:

Yikes, is there somebody out there that doesn't believe Japanese Americans were forcibly interned?

Little known  fact--Japanese in SOUTH AMERICA were also forcibly interned.  I know this for a fact, as my grandmother was one of them.    

The craziest part of it was, after being essentially kidnapped from Peru and incarcerated in the DOJ compound at Leavenworth for three years, after the war the U.S. government had the nerve to charge my 8 year old granny with "illegally entering the country without a visa."

gurdjieff66, in the future I would ask that you please keep specious garbage like this to yourself. Apologetics like this only make the situation worse.

People have been trying to come up with excuses for racism for years. Nonsense like "They weren't racist, they just didn't know any better..." is bullshit. Ignorance does not excuse racism, in fact ignorance is often the cause of racist behaviors and attitudes. "Good intentions" don't mean anything either. There is an old cliche "The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions", the more I think in this cliche the more I realize just how much wisdom it contains.

The most poignant indicator, to me, that the study was inherintly racist, is that the population of the study was entirely black, even though syphilis is obviously a disease that affects all races equally. Was Macon County 100% black? If so, why would they pick an all black county and why didn't they perform an identical study of whites in another county? If not, weren't there any whites in the county with syphilis? Even without scientific method, scientists have been exploring similarities and differences in racial biology for centuries. You mean to tell me it never occured to study the white people too?

The best answer I can think of is that these folk were poor, and wouldn't have been able to afford medical treatment anyway, therefore some enterprising scientists took advantage of the situation. This would work, except that I know, first hand, that there are plenty of poor white folk too; even this plausible explanation does not account for the seemingly blatant racism.

The fact of the matter is, there never was and never will be a better answer to explain why the study population was 100% black than "racism".

Things like having a "black nurse" perform the "free" checkups do not mitigate the racism. I would expect that in any research study, informed consent or no. I hear advertisements for research studies all the time which promise free checkups. Nor does the lack of the concept of "informed consent" explain the all black study population.

As for the remainder of the article, speculative garbage that can't seem to follow a simple logical argument. I can easily debunk his argument of common knowledge regarding Thomas Jefferson because I've never heard of such nonsense. As for falsifying history, Europeans have been doing that for ever; this is a common point of discussion among historians, especially when they attempt to unravel the spin after the fact to discern the real events of the day. But, I find it interesting that when the subject in question  reflects badly on the white American scientists, its described by Americans as "falsifying history" and not just ordinary revisionism.

The final paragraph is specious at best. In rereading the document, I see absolutely no foundation for the conclusion being made. I would, in fact, argue the exact opposite is true; so many whites want so desperately to believe they are not racist, especially in the face of the pure evil behind the history of racist oppression in America, that they will "spin any yarn" they can in order to mitigate their own feelings of guilt, convince themselves that it wasn't as bad as people say.

The problem is, this kind of thing just makes it worse. Nobody, especially not blacks, has accused them of anything. Its a kind of racism to think blacks are so dumb that they can't distinguish between the people that ran this experiment and the doctors of today; if some blacks are leery because of this study, and choose opt out of the latest and greatest medical study, that is fine. There is no onus on them to participate in the first place. But, when people start writing garbage like this article, it raises all sorts of flags.

I don't see the point to all the examinations of Wright's psychology, particularly by posters who don't know him.

He chose to be a very public person, and public people are to be judged by what they do and say.

Wright acted like a fool -- shoving it in the white world's face.  If, for example, any white preacher, however nutty, had done a demeaning imitation of a Southern or New York accent there would be across the board outrage.  Here we see numerous convoluted explanations.

Every act of pathological behavior has a cause.  The fact that there is a cause does not excuse the actor's responsibility.

Having said that, my take is that Wright would rather be Wright than have Obama as President.

blackton said:

but oh no, are you offended? is your itty bitty feewings hurt?

Um, no, my itty bitty feewings are not hurt.  But thank you for asking.

I base my "presumptuous" assertion on the fact that Barack Obama has never mentioned in public that he ever had a discussion like this with Wright.  I have also qualified my "presumptious" assertion by saying "as far as we know", since as you point out, it is entirely possible that he had these discussions, but just chose not to make them public.

I am trying to get a bead on the character of a person that has a very good chance of being President of the United States.  If he gets this position, he is going to have to stand up to a whole host of unsavory characters, such as the leaders of Russia and China, who in addition to making the occasional outrageous comments, also have a pile of nuclear weapons in their back pockets.  Or Al Qaeda, or the Israeli government on those occasions when they have been found to be spying against us, or even some of our allies.

If he can't even stand up, even in private, to a buffoon like Jeremiah Wright, how likely is it that he's going to stand up to all these other very dangerous characters out in the world.  Yes, I know - he will meet with them, all of them, as will Jimmy Carter.  

The comparison to an average pastor or rabbi is not relevant.  Most people refer to their pastor as simply "my pastor", not "my closest spiritual advisor".  The term "my closest spiritual advisor" carries with it an endorsement of the person that gets that title - if you were smart, you would check out this guy and make him your closest spiritual advisor too.  It implies that you have had numerous private conversations with that person (at least on spiritual matters, which one might suppose would include the contents of today's sermon that was just delivered by that very same "closest spiritual advisor").  And if you haven't had any private conversations with this person, then how on Earth is this person advising you about anything?

Or maybe, you might just be using Wright to develop "street cred", and then in your unguarded moments, you wonder incredulously that people might vote for somebody other than you because they are "clinging to their religiion".  Well, most "deeply religious people" do "cling to their religiion".  Does that make them bitter?

Something sure seems to have made you bitter, blackton.  What is it that you cling to?

Speaking as a (white) infectious diseases physician, more than its obvious racism--we should recall that in 1932 Alabama society was openly and virulently racist from top to bottom--the thing that astounds me about the Tuskegee atrocity was that from the moment of its conception it was quite obviously scientifically worthless.  By 1932 Western medicine had accumulated 400 years of experience with syphilis.   You could have filled a library with textbooks describing the late manifestations of syphilis.  Whole medical specialties--I'm thinking of dermatology, formerly dermatology and veneriology--had been founded around the diagnosis and description of the myriad forms that tertiary syphilis could assume.  (Syphilis was once known as The Great Imitator.)  The investigators' "contribution," the periodic observation and postmortem examination of a cohort of men affected by syphilis could not and should not have been expected to add anything to the centuries' worth of knowledge to which the medical profession already had access.  And their "hypothesis," as ridiculous and obviously racist as it was, namely that tertiary syphilis exerted differential effects on blacks and whites, could not even have been tested by the "experiment" as designed since there was no control group of white syphilitic men for comparison.

I do not believe that the perpetrators of the Tuskegee atrocity were sadists, rather they were cynics.  I suspect they recognized that they were undertaking worthless science, but in that deep Depression year of 1932 before Roosevelt's inauguration and the formation of the WPA, they were happy to have secured a long-term, Federally funded sinecure.  And if they were doing it by taking advantage of a bunch of illiterate, black sharecroppers, wasn't that just par for the course?  Who do you think made up the road gangs that tarred Alabama's highways?  But I ask you, does this make their actions any less evil?  

Let's examine the question by analogy: Which of the following is more evil, the sexual sadist who dismembers a woman for pleasure or the hired killer who shoots a woman in the head for a $10,000 payment from her estranged husband?  The latter's motivation will likely seem more understandable to you and this may lead you to do cut him a little break, but if you go deeper it becomes plain that the hit man's indifference to other consciousnesses is at least as chillingly profound as the sadist's and perhaps even more so.  One is tempted to insert a woefully clicheed Hannah Arendt quotation here, but I will check that desire and spare you a groan.

PeteBeck: So now that Obama has done the deed and finally rejected and denounced Wright, you will agree that we should put him aside as an Obama campaign issue right?  Obama has done and said something publicly; we don't need to get into the psychology or the cause of the thing, no?

Great.  Issue is dead.

>The comparison to an average pastor or rabbi is not relevant.  Most people refer to their pastor as simply >"my pastor", not "my closest spiritual advisor".

I am curious, buffaloboy, what are you quoting here? I can't find any reference to Obama's characterizing his relationship with Wright in this way.

Buffaloboy: I winced at blackton mocking you yesterday. Your reply is superb and one does wonder where the bitterness comes from,

Aeromonas: Your post is extremely eloquent.

Buffaloboy: I winced at blackton mocking you yesterday. Your reply is superb and one does wonder where the bitterness comes from,

Aeromonas: Your post is extremely eloquent.

buffaloboy writes:  "If he can't even stand up, even in private, to a buffoon like Jeremiah Wright, how likely is it that he's going to stand up to all these other very dangerous characters out in the world."

Very likely, as any interaction of his with Russian, Iranian, or whatever national leaders, as president of the United States, will be so different from his relationship with the minister of his church on the South Side of Chicago as to render your analogy ludicrous beyond belief.

There are a number of conclusions one can draw from Obama's handling of Wright.  Certainly your conclusion is among them, I don't deny that, but other plausible conclusions could be, for example, that he felt a sense of loyalty to somebody who had helped him and mentored him when he was younger, or that he didn't want to alienate people in the congregation who might have felt that he had treated Wright unjustly.

Why this should have anything to do with how Obama handles the next crisis with China is unclear.  The far more obvious analogy is how Obama might deal with, say, a senior political ally whom he appointed to a cabinet position but whom he now needs to fire.  The answer would be slowly, it seems -- but not as much time as e.g. George Bush took to fire the architect of the Iraq disaster, Donald Rumsfeld.  In that comparison, Obama comes off looking pretty ok.

>The comparison to an average pastor or rabbi is not relevant.  Most people refer to their pastor as simply >"my pastor", not "my closest spiritual advisor".

I am curious, buffaloboy, what are you quoting here? I can't find any reference to Obama's characterizing his relationship with Wright in this way.

Well, I thought that was a term that Obama had used when describing Wright, but I just did a brief search and so far have only come up with other people using that term when describing Wright and Obama.  So if Obama never referred to Wright that way, then I will apologize for the inference.

Well, I did find this (on foxnews of all places):

He disputed characterizations of Wright as his mentor, saying: “He was never my spiritual adviser, he was never my spiritual mentor — he was my pastor.”

So, if that is Obama'a position, and nobody (including me) can produce any evidence to the contrary, then I will have to retract my previous statements and apologize to Mr. Obama.

You know the prescription for a national disaster?

Distract enough people with high flying rhetoric, gain the required number of delegates, then fall on your face as an untested President.

Touche- Naomi88

"You know the prescription for a national disaster?"

Well, one prescription might be to (a) just scrape through the election with the help of the Supreme Court, (b) accept Dick Cheney's appointment of himself as VP, and (c) launch a major invasion of an Arab country with no Plan B in case things don't quite work out.

wkwami  - The best description of the Rev. Wright that I've encountered is that he is 90% brilliant and 10% crazy. I've listened to what Rev. Wright says and I agree that the vast majority of what he says is deeply religious, humanitarian, and on target. When he goes off the reservation he goes far off into crazy land and I think the insinuation that the US Government introduced AIDS to target blacks is just plain nuts. I understand the skepticism regarding the reprehensible conduct in verifiable cases regarding experiments on blacks but AIDS is a completely different situation. Experiments are controlled situations with specific targets not uncontrollable scourges unleashed on humanity at large. There have been untold numbers of whites and people of all races that have died from AIDS. The cost to society as a whole has been enormous due to the cost of medical care as the result of AIDS. I'm also a skeptic and a cynic but to think that there are people in the US Government who are so racist and deranged as to try and use AIDS to kill blacks is totally unbelievable. There are far too many legitimate reasons for blacks to resent treatment by the US Government and white society that need addressing to waste even a minute of your time and energy thinking about outrageous conspiracy theories.

I'd say 60 percent brilliant, 10 percent crazy is more like it. There's at least 30 percent normal in there. We can scoff at Wright's ridiculous beliefs about AIDS and whatnot, but I guarantee that if you gave any one of us (A) several hours of unfettered extemporaneous microphone time, and (B) thirty years' worth of past recorded conversations from which anyone who doesn't like us can cherry-pick 15-second sound bites, any of us would sound like a frightening, unhinged moron. Much, if not most, of what any one of us believes to be true about the world, isn't. A casual acquaintance with the history of human knowledge -- i.e. the world not being flat after all, something any twelve-year-old with a stick can prove, and yet the world-is-flat belief suckered our ancestors for thousands of generations -- should give everyone an abiding sense of humility about the ultimate validity of their own beliefs about how the world works.

Rhubards: without commenting on Wright, I'd say you have put it the best way possible.  And, of course, the candidate here is Obama, and not Wright.

Buffaloboy: That was very elegant of you.  Of course, I have for the life of me no idea what a Spiritual Advisor is.  I always thought pastors/priests/rabbis did that.  This certainly a newfangled thing for me ...

rbrown: "untested President"?  So we should only elect incumbents?  Who, other than an incumbent could really claim to be "tested"?  OK, Cheney perhaps, because he is the power behind the throne, but McCain? How do you get "tested" for the presidency by being tortured by the Vietnamese?  Rodham Clinton?  So now being investigated by Starr is a test of character?  Clinton I?  Running Arkansas is a test of Presidency?  Bush père?  What exactly did he do in eight years of vice-Presidency - other than attend funerals and plead ignorance to Iran-Contra?

In all seriousness, you like to elect the wife of a former President, by all means, either go to Argentina or vote for Hillarious.  But could we please end this "tested" business?

Buffalo: thank you for being an upstanding example of decency.

Rhubarbs: from my experience, Spiritual Advisor is one who guides a believer/follower (in the generic sense) in building their faith, largely by answering questions and discussing issues with the person involved; a Pastor is the "Shepherd" of the congregation, and is responsible for leading/presiding over the celebration of the rites of their faith.

Thanks for including the quote from Faux; that seems to jive with what he described in his book, which was more of a conversion experience while Wright was giving his sermon, than any sort of exploration of his faith with Wright.  He described what it was like to come to understand how God's message fit neatly with his own personal missions. I'm not gonna go dig it out at this moment, its too late. Anyway, this would be consistent with Wright as Pastor and having helped him find God/his faith, but not a Spiritual Advisor.

Can't we just balance out Obama's affiliation with Wright with the longstanding Republican affiliation (not limited to John McCain) with whackjob fundamentalist preachers like John Hagee, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (a serious presidential candidate, no less)?  The more the media continues to focus on Wright exclusively, the more it begins to smell like a double standard and, yes...Dare I say it?  Racism.

wayne:

I agree with you on the double-standard; that much was painfully apparent to me from day one. It was even more painful to watch how Faux took turns with itself, "analyzing" (read sliming) Wright, then trying to smear the mixture all over Obama's face. i don't think there was racism initially, but the fiasco has definitely tapped into some hidden reserves over the course.

On the plus side it may have neutralized the Bradley effect for the polling stats in the upcoming states!

Unfortunately, I don't think we can't really lump them in together because Wright is not fundamentalist; he's more of the overbearing uncle that keeps making Obama look bad for his first date with American Presidency and does not know when to let sleeping dogs lie. Its not that Wright is overly concerned with oppressing Middle-America with his particular sect of Christianity, he just can't make himself STFU long enough for Obama to put this thing away.