"According to the Associated Press, former Republican presidential aspirant

Mike Huckabee observed today in Billings, Montana that "Jeremiah

Wright needs for Obama to lost so that he can justify his anger, his

hostile bitterness against the United States of America." Wright, he said,

is trying to derail Senator Obama's candidacy because he does want any

evidence that race relations in America have improved."

Well, yes.

Your second point is even more important, though.

Let Obama reject Black theology totally and not just that of the Reverend Wright.

Onward Christian Souljahs.

First of all I think Huckabee is right, as he usually is on these topics about faith and politics (I disagree with him on a lot of things but, with the exception of his flubbing the 'What would Jesus have to say about Capital Punishment?' question, he has generally been an insightful commentator on these things).

And so it is. For Wright to be important, and for his life's project to be validated Obama must fail. The men offer two sharply different visions of American in the 21st century and of the potential for transcending the legacy of the past and current racial disparity. It was right for Obama to repudiate Wright's message and his vision, and to draw a sharp contrast between it and what Obama stands for.

That being said, there is no reason for people to pile on Wright, especially when they really haven't listened to him and they don't really understand what he is saying. Frankly, the man has been frequently quoted out of context and vilified. The media frequently dumb things down and create villains through over-simplification, so I don't think it's just a matter of Jeremiah Wright.

But mass media loses credibility, at least in the African American community when they dump on Wright and gloss over the realities of American history. Take the charge that Wright said that the federal government was responsible for HIV in the African American community? Is that what the man said at the National Press Club? You would think so if you didn't watch the event itself, and if you didn't listen to what the man actually said, instead of what you needed him to say in order to reduce him to a caricature.

What Wright actually did was refer to the history of the Tuskegee experiments where the US government funded injecting unsuspecting black patients with syphilis in order to see its long-term untreated effects. We like to ignore that part of our history. Wright's point? If it could happen then, he would not rule out that it could happen now. One might disagree with his conclusion, but he stayed within the bounds of the historically documentable.

Blacks may ask why white Americans are embarrassed when Wright brings these aspects of our history up; but they are not about to abandon Wright for extrapolating from historical facts.

If whites need a villain then they will continue to vilify Wright, so be it. And they will never understand the heart of his message in his recent appearances where he focused not on 9-11, not on HIV AIDS, but on African American culture, the African American church, and the need for the majority culture to stop confusing cultural differences with cultural deficiencies.

But most African Americans get where Wright is coming from even if many whites are unable to hear him because they need a villain. So they take bits and pieces of what he says, twist them into sound bites so they have lost all context, nuance, and meaning, and they beat the caricature of Wright as if it were a pinata.

Fine. Do what you must. Have a "Sista Soulja" moment, if you get off on that sort of thing. The world moves on. Even the tone deaf will have to reckon with global realities one day.

I was amazingly impressed with Huckabee's astuteness, decency and temperament in the course of the campaign... I find I once again agree with him and that he has voiced precisely the conclusion I came to about Wright's motives  for what he had done... yes he wanted to derail the Obama candidacy.  He wanted to show Obama that his hopes of transcending race in America was a delusion... it didn't matter how destructive he was in the process.  Not just of Obama, for whom he was a surrogate father in Obama's search for a Black identity, but for the hopes of millions of voters, whites and blacks as well as those who have donated to his campaign and have worked indefatigably for him.

Wright is dazzling when he is at his best and a very astute even prophetic critic of American society say 95% of the time and then he gets revved up and goes right off a cliff...

That little monkey dance Wright did in front of the National Press Club... it was a theatrical way of saying..."Whites think we are just monkeys.  Well I'll act like a monkey and you know what Obama, they'll identify it with you..."

Wright intended to hurt Obama's candidacy... It may have boomeranged, by forcing Obama to distance himself from Wright definitively because of his purposeful destructiveness.

I like Obama's own "purposeful destructiveness," Annabella2, it's almost Kantian.

Great post, matthawk. Wright has said some inexcusable, awful  things. But a number of the statements that he's taken most heat for are not as "crazy" or as incomprehensible as the media has made them out to be through reduction, simplification, and sensationalization.

ironyroad said: "I like Obama's own "purposeful destructiveness," Annabella2, it's almost Kantian."

So, you see it in  aesthetic terms?

Do you think he is engaging in "performance art?"

Matthawk "What Wright actually did was refer to the history of the Tuskegee experiments where the US government funded injecting unsuspecting black patients with syphilis in order to see its long-term untreated effects. We like to ignore that part of our history. Wright's point? If it could happen then, he would not rule out that it could happen now. One might disagree with his conclusion, but he stayed within the bounds of the historically documentable."

You would have more credibility if you had gotten the details of that awful and criminal study correct:

"Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/.../Tuskegee_experiment

While a doctors first duty is to treat illness, leaving people untreated is not the same as "injecting them with disease."

No not really aesthetic, jd, unless being seen to dispense with Wright's now-unwanted influence and perspective has a good dramatic quality to it.  Like Henry V and Falstaff.

It was Wright who claimed that Obama was just "playing the game" or something similar when he distanced himself from him in the Philly speech.  Obama made it clear that it wasn't just a move in the game for him last month, and neither was it so on Tuesday.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

I simply meant (in a somewhat satirical way) that Obama's move to eradicate the bridges between Wright and himself had the quality of an imperative act -- something that had to be done for reasons that went beyond the contingent.

Irony: "I like Obama's own "purposeful destructiveness," Annabella2, it's almost Kantian."

I took your comment above to be a reference to Kant's definition of aesthetics as "purposefulness without purpose."

In any case, I like your association of Wright and Obama with Falstaff and Prince Hal.

Ah.  Henry of course was young and inexperienced, and people were worried he'd under bad influences as king.

Prince Hal, I mean, of course -- the Henry V to be.

jacksondyer, I stand corrected on not proof-reading before I posted and saying "injected" instead of leaving untreated; but the point of the argument was that the experiment was government funded, which is why Wright and many others are suspicious of the intentions of the government on these matters. This has been conveniently ignored by the media saying that what Wright said at the National Press Club was that the Federal Government caused AIDS.

ironyroad makes a good observation about Prince Hal transformation into Henry V. There is a time when a young man in a complicated world who grew up without a father and with a contested racial identity would need someone to help him to resolve the many contradictions in his life; and so he runs with his buddies, not all of which may be suitable company for a King, who must make mature decisions and rally the people during a time of crisis, lest the people of the land parish. Obama is demonstrating the ability to put aside childhood things and assume the mantle of leadership.

matthawk said: ' but the point of the argument was that the experiment was government funded, which is why Wright and many others are suspicious of the intentions of the government on these matters. This has been conveniently ignored by the media saying that what Wright said at the National Press Club was that the Federal Government caused AIDS."

It's still a stretch to assume that the Federal Government would deliberately cause AIDS. People in leadership positions should know better and not repeat this nonsense.

jacksondyer says "It's still a stretch to assume that the Federal Government would deliberately cause AIDS. People in leadership positions should know better and not repeat this nonsense."

But, of course, this is not what Rev. Wright said at the National Press Club. The point is that twisting a man's words around because one needs a villain, is as bad as what Rev. Wrights critics are accusing HIM of doing. This is the issue.