Wright Isn't Wrong

The campaign that won’t die has the controversy that wont die, “The Sermons of Reverend Wright”. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard at least one of the sound bytes from Barack Obama’s former Pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The clip of Rev. Wright in a traditional African Dress at the pulpit delivering a “controversial” sermon after 9/11 has been played ad nasuem.

Jeremiah Wright, who had maintained a very low profile for the past month had a coming out this week. First was the generally calm Bill Moyers interview. The PBS interview proved nothing in the way of controversy, they prefer substantive discourse to shouting(which is why they currently need your donations). Then came the NAACP speech, and the Smackdown Q and A at the National Press Club. Wow.

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE SMACKDOWN

These two performances(and they were performances) caused enough “damage” that Barack Obama was had a Press Conference on his Pastor yesterday. There could have been an emergency, “Iraq”, or “Global Food Crisis” Press Conference, but alas, the media knows that the most important thing to talk about is Jeremiah Wright (he totally kills 30,000 people a day like starvation right?).

Obama was forced to do what he had to do, divorce himself completely from Wright. I’m sure on a personal level he was upset that his former Pastor had chosen to make such a public spectacle when he did. On Wright’s part, it was stupid because it allowed the media to frame him, and forced Obama to publicly divorce his entire campaign from Wright.

Whatever his motivation Wright could have picked a better time to come out so hard. It is the media’s job to butcher reality into 10 second snippets.

Therfore Let’s just, and I know this will be difficult for some of you, slide to the universe where Wright is Right. That’s a little place I call complex reality (home).

Rev Wright: “The US Government is responsible for AIDS”.

Well it’s not like the US government has done anything bad to black people. Oh yeah that’s right, Slavery! And Jim Crow! And a Prison Industrial Complex built on the excessive Incarceration of Minorities for Minor Drug Offenses!

Is the “US Government” responsible for Aids. Well, what do you mean by “US Government”? My mailman is a part of the US Government. I don’t think he gave black people Aids.

But the US Public Health Service did intentionally infect African American men with Syphilis under the scientific premise of, “let’s see what the fuck happens” and "Fuck em' they're black. Over a 40 year period between 1932 and 1972, 399 black men in Tuskegee Alabama were given Syphilis without medicine(by 1947 Penicillin was the standard medical treatment). By the end of the “experiment” only 74 were still alive, 40 wives were infected and 17 children developed congenital syphilis.

With this happening as recent as 1972, is it not at least understandable why older African-Americans are skeptical that AIDS and HIV ravaged the African American community un-proportionally worse than any other racial group because of the behavior of their community alone?

To this day we still give more funding to provenly ineffective methods like faith based abstinence. Pray to whoever the fuck you want that you don't get AIDS, but prayers don’t prevent HIV, Condoms do.

All these facts together shed some light on why not Just Wright, but a large percentage of African Americans (and a couple Whiteys) share this view.

Rev Wright: “The US government is engaging in Terrorism, and this terrorism caused 9/11”.

Well, we did fund a little rag-tag group of Rebels fighting the Soviets back in the 1980’s. That movie with Julia Roberts, Charlie Wilson’s war I think covered it. Oh yeah, we trained and funded rebels in Afghanistan and equipped them with all the necessary tools for guerilla warfare. Then when they won we just completely abandoned them. Who was that one guy our CIA trained, oh yeah, Osama Bin Laden.

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Whether they are right wing Para-military groups in Nicaragua, or Tribal warriors in the South Pacific our CIA aids violence for political purposes. That is supporting terrorism. And as Ralph Wiggum so eloquently pointed out in “The Simpsons Movie”, that brings blowback.

Rev. Wright: “God Bless America, No No No, God DAMN AMERICA”.

This is by far the most “offensive” statement that Rev. Wright made. Of course no one listened to the broader text of the sermon, but lets examine those comments.

Damn comes from the word Condemn, as in God damns or God condemns things. The Christian God follows some fairly simple rules, the 10 commandments, and Jesus’ golden one, “love thy neighbor”. The entireity of the media has fueled this outrage, “God does and will always Bless America, he certainly would not Damn it”.

How is it then that in the wealthiest nation in the world, over 40 million don’t have healthcare? How is then that in the fattest nation in the world, millions go hungry? How is it in the Freeest nation in the world, we have higher Incarceration rates than almost anywhere? How in the most righteous nation in the world, can we allow for institutionalized torture(it goes much deeper than water boarding) in the war on terror?

The truth is we can’t be. I love the people in this country. But our country has some deep flaws. And I do not for one think that if you applied a biblical god’s standards to this country, that god would not “bless us”. That God would Condemn Us, that God would Damn us.