By Mike Whitney /
29/04/08 "ICH" --- - Jeremiah Wright is 5' 10 '' of tightly-packed
explosives. He may be the best public speaker since Martin Luther
King. He is bright, passionate, insightful and erudite. When he
speaks; the sparks fly and the ground shakes. Yesterday, when Wright
took the podium at the National Press Club, he knew he'd be taken to
task no matter what he said. He knew that every word he uttered would
be twisted by the media to make him look like a hate-monger, or worse,
a racist. But Wright faced his critics with dignity and delivered
another barnburner. By the end of the speech, everyone in attendance
was on their feet applauding wildly for the man the cor****ate media
has chosen to destroy.
Reverend Wright:
"Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and girls to fight in
the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the present two wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. My goddaughter=92s unit just arrived in Iraq this
week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of
privilege to avoid military service, while sending over 4,000 American
boys and girls of every race to die over a lie." (Standing ovation)
Right on. Wright doesn't mince his words. He knows what's he wants
to say and says it with gusto. Like Nietzsche opined, "If you want to
be philosopher, bring a hammer". Wright brought his hammer yesterday,
only it turned out to be a sledgehammer.
Reverend Wright:
"Our congregation took a stand against apartheid when the government
of our country was sup****ting the racist regime of the African
government in South Africa.
Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador
and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-
Contra scandal, was sup****ting the Contras, who were killing the
peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries.
Our congregation sent 35 men and women through accredited seminaries
to earn their master of divinity degrees, with an additional 40
currently being enrolled in seminary, while building two senior
citizen housing complexes and running two child care programs for the
poor, the unemployed, the low-income parents on the south side of
Chicago for the past 30 years.
Our congregation feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families every
year, while our government cuts food stamps and spends billions
fighting in an unjust war in Iraq." (second standing ovation)
The prophetic theology of the black church, which Wright preaches,
is a theology of liberation and transformation. This isn't the Jesus
who provides fatter paychecks and vacation homes in the Barbados. This
is Jesus the radical who came to deliver his people from bondage; to
end segregation and Jim Crow, and to bring positive, meaningful and
permanent change to "a social order that has gone sour."
Rev. Wright:
"God does not want one people seeing themselves as superior to
other people. God does not want the powerless m*****, the poor, the
widows, the marginalized, and those underserved by the powerful few to
stay locked into sick systems which treat some in the society as being
more equal than others in that same society."
Right again. Wright's message is uncontroversial. So who put the
bull's-eye on his back and decided to make him out to be a clownish
caricature of a raging black radical spewing vitriol? It wasn't a
black man, that's for sure. Was it someone who had a stake in the
upcoming election and knew the best way to destroy Obama was to create
a straw-man who would embody the very characteristics that make white
people "uncomfortable"?
Who decided that their would be no Obama campaign; just Jeremiah
Wright front-n-center 24-7 on every news channel and every front page?
Who decided that Wright would have a larger media entourage than
candidate Obama? Who decided that Iraq, the economy, and health care
would all vanish from the national debate and voters would have to
cast their ballots according to whether they liked Jeremiah Wright or
not?
Obama's sup****ters say that Obama wants to "transcend" race; that he
wants to span the racial divide and move forward. Great, but how?
Obama doesn't pick what issues the media focuses on. Neither does
Wright. Nor did Wright choose to make himself the center of attention;
that decision was made at the highest level of the cor****ate
establishment where the ruling body deploys journalists in a way that
best promotes their own narrow interests. In this case, the media was
tasked to sort through 15 years of backlogged sermons so they could
extract a few choice tidbits that could be used to shock whites. The
flap over Jeremiah Wright, who no one even heard before, is completely
fabricated with the intention of derailing Obama's candidacy.
Everybody knows that.
The media is omniscient; they remain invisible behind the camera
lens. But there's no doubt about their objectives or that they've
become a big player in the electoral process. The media sees itself as
a "kingmaker"; their job is to shape public opinion using the tools at
their disposal. This particular incident brings back the infamous
"Dean scream", which was replayed on commercial TV over 900 times
during a 48 hour period, with a background narrative which suggested
that Dean was mentally unstable. It worked, too. Dean's approval
ratings plummeted after the onslaught and the threat of an antiwar
candidate appearing in the general election disappeared. Another
triumph for the blue suits.
Jeremiah Wright is being used the same way. As Max Blumenthal said,
Wright is being used "to mobilize resentment against Barack
Obama....He is presented as the quintessential angry black man that
the right wing loves to incite hatred against.=94
This is the classic Swift-boating technique; choose a divisive issue
(Race, abortion, immigration) and then find someone who can be used to
embody the controversy. Wright is just the unlucky fellow who drew the
short straw. If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. After
all, the real target is Obama; he's the real trophy. The prospect of a
black man ---however articulate and capable---occupying the Oval
Office still sends shutters down the spines of America's WASPish
oligarchs. That's "bonesman" territory, and they mean to keep it that
way.
The media's job is to make it look like Obama and Wright are joined
at the hip; whatever comes out of Wright's mouth gets pinned on Obama.
It's guilt by association and it appears to be working. Obama's
approval ratings are slipping and his sup****ters are are frustrated.
The public is wondering, "Why are black people so angry; and why is
that Reverend Wright saying such mean things about America? Maybe I
was wrong about that Obama fellow after all."
But Wright is no fool. He's aware of the media's cynical agenda and
he's facing it head-on. He doesn't vacillate or turn to putty like
Pelosi and the other moral vagabonds in the Democratic congress.
Wright is tempered steel; 100 percent Marine. No surrender. He knows
that the gains in race relations have never come at the ballot box,
but in the streets and in the churches and in the prisons. That where
the where the real change comes; "transformational" change.
Rev. Wright:
"The prophetic theology of the black church, during the days of
chattel slavery, was a theology of liberation. It was preached to set
free those who were held in bondage spiritually, psychologically, and
sometimes physically. And it was practiced to set the slaveholders
free from the notion that they could define other human beings or
confine a soul set free by the power of the gospel."
God=92s desire is for positive change; real change, not cosmetic change;
radical change or a change that makes a permanent difference,
transformation. God=92s desire is for transformation, changed lives,
changed minds, changed laws, changed social orders, and changed hearts
in a changed world."
Amen, Reverend. Give 'em hell.
Here's the video:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19836.htm=
|
