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Beware the terrible simplifiers and celebrate the media who report with reason and intelligence.
BILL MOYERS:Welcome to the Journal.
I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" "Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience." That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical," one viewer wrote. A "nut case," said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.
Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known — scholarly, smart, and gentle in person — uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.
But where I grew up in the south, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else; a safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed. I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed, "We the people." Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, and Jesse Helms. Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard about and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic.
That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances this week. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle ? forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy. Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated, while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test. Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide or yourself. At least it helps me to understand the why of them.
But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.
Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.
Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this ? this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".
May 7, 2008 in BITCHING & SCHEMING | Permalink
Comments
First of all, yes, McCain sought the endorsements of religious figures with radical views. When you seek an endorsement, you are making a political move to try to get the people who support the endorsee to vote for you. Obama's relationship with Wright was different. He sat in church and listened to him preach for twenty years, called him his 'spiritual mentor' and the book he wrote was in part inspired by him. The relationship is very different.
And Obama needs to worry more about this sort of thing than McCain does. He has been a senator for three years, two of which he has spent running for President. I'm sure if he had more experience, say, 20 years as a senator or a few as a US senator and four as a state governor there would be more things for his opponents to attack him on. Given that there is not, and his campaign has been one where he has run on his JUDGMENT and CHARACTER, that's where the attacks are going to focus for now.
What bothered me about the Wright scandal is that all of his defenders in the media said that it was "taken out of context." Then, after Wright came on TV and gave us more context than we (or Obama) could handle, they said that he was just being patriotic and there is nothing unpatriotic about denouncing our country's flaws. I'd almost buy that. But having read the context of the speech, what bothered me was that when Wright spoke about America it wasn't "WE should change" or "WE did some horrible things." America was clearly a THEM that he was attacking. I understand the social/racial reasons for that but in 2008? Whatever. I personally don't care what people go to church to hear, and I admittedly don't understand African American churches like his, apparently.
But I'm not going to NOT vote for Obama because of things his pastor said. I'm going to NOT vote for Obama because I think he's a Marxist who will run this country like Jimmy Carter did and because we're ideologically very different.
The pastor Wright thing alone isn't that big of a deal. But the attack strategy on Obama that I've seen is trying to paint a picture of him based on his associations and his own words that defines him as being part of the elitist far left and thus out of touch with average Americans. Saying the gov't started HIV, is at fault for 9/11, and "God D America" isn't what most Americans believe, but some do believe this sort of thing. The "Che" flag in the Texas office and the fact that his official blogger is a Marxist bothers me, but the elitist branch of the left probably sees that as a hip "plus." What his wife said about finally being proud of her country rubbed me the wrong way, but the elitist left probably wouldn't have noticed it if nobody made a big deal out of it. What he said about Americans clinging to guns and religion because they were bitter about the economy isn't in line with my thinking, but a true Marxist would have to agree with that statement. If the part of the population that viewed his statements as elitist or his associations as suspect didn't vote we wouldn't be hearing about it. We'd all ride to yoga in our Prius, drinking shade-grown coffee, listening to NPR, and nodding in agreement that working class "Middle America" needs to be saved from guns and religion and wondering how anyone could call us "elitist."
But this Republican attack strategy isn't really going to affect anyone on the left of course. It's going after the soft conservatives and moderates who are tired of the Bush. It's aimed at the people who voted for Nixon, then Carter, then Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton twice, then Bush again - basically the segment of the electorate that puts presidents in office. And if Obama had something resembling a record, maybe his opponents would go for that. But, as his campaign is built around his judgment and character, that's where he's going to take most of the heat.
Posted by: Chaz | May 7, 2008 4:12:19 PM
Moyers is like a taxpayer-funded Olbermann. I may have to pay for his lectures, but I don't particularly like what he has to say.
I love how "journalists" like Moyers, always say we are viewing controversial figures, like Wright, in a one dimensional manner and through our own "experiences (read: prejudices), that if we just took the time to probe the "complex" layers of their personalities and their "intricate" life stories, we would be far more sympathetic and agreeable to them and their causes. What Moyers is saying is that we're just too ignorant and unsophisticated to trust our own judgement and thank PBS that there are sophisticates, like him, to explain Wright to us hillbillies. This is the PBS elitist view at it's most obnoxious.
By the same token, I don't hear Moyers pleading for a deeper understanding and multi-dimensional view of, say, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. No, he's fine leaving them seen as cartoon figures by the Left.
I'd like to see him explain why Hagee and Robertson say the things they do.
Posted by: Chaz | May 7, 2008 5:31:26 PM
They're not 'toons?
Posted by: dsb | May 7, 2008 6:33:03 PM
Please! If this were just about an endorsement from a radical preacher, there wouldn't be significant controversy. Accordingly, it doesn't compare with Hagee's endorsement of McCain.
Nor does it compare with long lost oval office tapes resurfacing of Billy Graham in the oval office with Nixon. There was a brief controversy over that, but if I recall, the Nixon tapes had already shown anti-Semitism on the part of Nixon -- who was already dead. Barack Obama is alive and running for president, and Jeremiah Wright has been his pastor and spiritual advisor for decades.
Moyers is being dishonest if he sees a double standard with Wright. If McCain had been going to an equivalent white church, he'd be catching more flak if anything. Obama needs to take his lumps and move on, while Wright needs, and deserves, to be condemned and marginalized as a bigot and as a radical.
Posted by: Owen Courreges | May 8, 2008 10:32:41 AM
Oh please Chaz, George W. Bush is seen only as a cartoon figure by the Left???
If I may speak for those of us who reside in the Middle....on most occasions that I've watched W read a speech, or make off-the-cuff statements, he's proven himself to be a complete buffoon. Even Elmer Fudd has better diction and a better command over the English language. Bush is a disgrace to the "elite" educational system that birthed him.
And regardless of whether I agree or disagree with any of his administration's policies, it makes me cringe every time he opens his mouth. He IS a cartoon character, and most of the developed world knows it. The very minimum I expect from our President is to speak more clearly than a fifth grader, even if he or she isn't as smart as one. That's Leadership 101.
Posted by: mellie | May 8, 2008 12:20:39 PM
As Pat Buchanan has pointed out blacks have nothing to be angry about. It's not the white mans fault they have a 50% highschool graduation rate, or that 70% are born out of wedlock, or that they kill eachother. If anything whites should be angry at the rates they murder, rape, and rob us. www.goodoleboybumpersickers.com
Posted by: Pete | May 8, 2008 1:02:30 PM
@ mellie
When I said "cartoon character" I didn't mean that anyone should or shouldn't mock the president for how he speaks. I personally couldn't care less. Where did you even get that from?
It's natural for people to characterize those with whom they disagree in general terms (LET ME SUBSTITUTE THAT RIGHT NOW FOR "CARTOON CHARACTER")and plead for a deeper understanding of those with whom they agree with or sympathize.
And again, I have to say that I don't care one bit what this particular issue has to say about Obama. I don't think Obama's a racist; I don't think he believes that crazy stuff about AIDS being engineered to kill black people, and although I think Obama is a radical in his own way he doesn't share all of Wrights radical views. That, I believe, is common sense. But, since Barack himself said that this is a legitimate issue I'll discuss it. I think Obama in the end has done the right thing about all of this.
However, I think the self-aggrandizing behavior of Wright and his apologists is causing his campaign more harm than they realize, and is prolonging the controversy which is what they state they do NOT want.
Moreover, it's the wrong strategy. Why defend someone who most of America and the candidate himself agrees is wrong? Just to prove how far to the left you actually are?
I just find it particularly repellent that Bill Moyers chooses to go on a taxpayer-funded diatribe explaining away racist and hateful remarks.
It's one thing to feel compassion for a race who has historically been mistreated in the way that African Americans have been in this country. That's human nature, and in my opinion a correct response. It's another thing entirely to excuse or rationalize racism because it happens to be retaliatory in nature. And that's precisely what Moyers and Wright have done, and what Obama has finally said he disagrees with. In fact, Obama seems to be the only one with the proper perspective, if a bit late. I can guarantee months from now the "move on from this" crowd will still be talking about it, and saying more about themselves than they realize in the process.
Posted by: Chaz (yet again) | May 8, 2008 1:09:43 PM
Bill Moyers deserves to be applauded for his insightful and honest assessment of this issue and all of its contradictions and nuances. As Chaz proves, the right intends to raise this issue throughout the campaign. To be sure, any response will be considered an admission of Wright's "merits," an attempt to trap Obama into discussing sound bytes of his former pastor ad naseum. Indeed, the use of this issue is actually a subtle way of scaring white Americans, many of whom refuse to acknowledge that numerous white politicians, including Senator McCain, have established close relationships with incendiary and controversial religious figures and most of whom have absolutely no knowledge, let alone experience, of African-American Christian churches. (That said, I am not implying Wright somehow "speaks" for everyone, though he claims to do so).
In Obama's case, I tend to agree with Reverend August Thompson, an African-American Catholic priest here in Central Louisiana, who said that Obama likely associated with Wright in order to understand what was occurring in the African-American community. Obama, after all, is biracial and was raised by his white mother and his white grandparents. In his book Dreams of My Father, he writes about his struggles with and ultimate acceptance of his racial identity. Perhaps this is something most white Americans cannot appreciate or with which they cannot empathize, but it is certainly an important part of Mr. Obama's life. And it should be respected and understood.
Chaz, I understand your perspective and your cold, hardball analysis, but I think that the more voters learn about Obama's life-- his narrative-- the more people realize that it's ludicrous, stupid, and simplistic to imply he and Wright share the same beliefs, that it's self-evident Mr. Obama loves his country and any affront to his patriotism is dirty politics, and that American religious life is as complicated a discourse as American race relations.
People are actually watching this election. They're informing themselves. And they're well-versed in the ways Republicans attempt to win national elections.
Let's talk about the real issues-- the War in Iraq, our dependence on foreign oil, renewable energy, health care, our education system, our economy.
Why are our politics so predisposed toward the simplistic and sensational? We're electing someone to direct this country's policies; this isn't just any ordinary media spectacle.
Posted by: CenLamar | May 11, 2008 12:18:35 AM
I have to agree with CenLamar both on the lack of weight of the attacks on Obama because of the ideas of another and on why Obama would be in the congregation in the first place.
But who knows really what affect being in that church had on Obama?
Are some comments made by a pastor enough to summarize and bottle that pastor's character? Maybe.
Does being friends with someone mean you believe all they believe? Of course not.
I do have hope, after the past 8 years, the electorate has woken up a bit and is seeing through the MSM dumbing down of everything.
How do you stay smart and interesting over a 24 hour period 365 days out of the year? I don't envy the cable news networks because they are destined to rely on talking points and narrative tools to both make their lives easier and the to create a story they think is worth paying attention too . . .
Even if it is fiction.
Posted by: humidhaney | May 11, 2008 12:57:28 PM
*Fart*
Posted by: Spectrum 7 | May 11, 2008 9:31:23 PM
@CenLamar
First of all, I've said many times (and even on this thread) that I don't believe Wright's statements are Obama's beliefs. I have also stated that I think this is a non-issue. I was also tired of the media coverage it received.
And while I did say that there would be a Republican strategy to portray him as an elitist who is out of touch with mainstream America, it's not the RNC that's responsible for perpetuating the over-coverage of the Wright issue. It's the media.
And as far as Bill M., well...
After looking at the facts for myself, and what I consider to be facts are the full context of Obama's speeches and the full context of Wrights, I was able to discern that:
1.Wright said things that are bigoted and radical in nature.
2.This does not mean that Obama is the same sort of bigoted, radical person.
3.Obama publicly stated that he does not share those beliefs.
Good enough for me. And I got all that with a handicap. My conservative brain is unable to process nuance and complexity, of course, but I wa able to conclude that Wright's statements don't define Obama's personality. I don't need any more coverage on the issue. It's over.
What Moyers says is:
1.Wright's statements may 'seem' bigoted, but if they are it's ok because they stem from justifiable anger at the white community.
2.It's a shame that the media made Obama cast aside his preacher, who is just a reasonable, impassioned theologian.
So Moyers gets to rebuke the media wholesale and I as someone who contributes to Moyers' salary do not have the right to impugn a sophist who defends a race- baiter? Nonsense.
CenLamar, the issue for me isn't how Wright affects Obama. It's how media figures insist upon defending Wright despite the fact that Obama has publicly stated that he disagrees with his statements.
Posted by: Chaz | May 12, 2008 8:37:46 AM
