Watching the campaign coverage this past week, I've felt intensely frustrated, as I know many other Obama supporters have, at the essential fraudulence and hypocrisy of the punditocracy's treatment of the issue of Rev. Wright's remarks. No need to rehash the many examples folks here (and elsewhere) have provided of unsavory clerics with whom other candidates have had associations -- associations that they have not explained with anything close to Sen. Obama's candor, persuasive context, or moral clarity.
Unfortunately, for all the good he did with his remarkable address, a residue lingers in the miasma that is MSM coverage. Pat Buchanan, Joe Scarborough, and the other usual suspects -- and of course Fox and the wingnuts that the MSM likes to stovepipe, like Rush -- continue to insist that this issue will dog Obama for the rest of the campaign, that he still hasn't explained why he would belong to such a church for 20 years, expose his children to "hate," etc. And I fear that their insistent repetition of their anti-Obama talking points (for that is what they are) will do significant damage.
Yet their ability to harm the Obama campaign depends on an assumption about what typically goes on in that church that I believe to be false, but which the Republican shills (for that is what they are) have for the moment established as fact. That assumption is: that Rev. Wright's worst statements are typical, and that the climate at the church is primarily one of black anger, of conspiracy-mongering, of demonization of whites, and so on. Based on what I have already learned about Trinity Church, I am confident that is untrue. It is clear to me that the dominant message is one of social action and community uplift. And that for someone like Sen. Obama (or Oprah Winfrey) who is attracted by the church's core focus, by its many charitable programs and by its enormous power to impact the community (8,000 members), it is worth putting up with the occasional discomfort caused by some of the pastor's kooky remarks. But how can Sen. Obama's campaign effectively convey this important truth about his church to the electorate without prolonging the issue, wading into deadening complexity, sounding like it's making excuses, etc.? I think there is a simple solution...
The solution is to make an ad in which WHITE members of the church talk about their experiences there. It needn't be long... short and sweet is better. The idea occurred to me after reading Nicholas Kristof's op-ed in today's New York Times, in which he quotes the extremely eminent, mainstream white theologian Martin Marty (longstanding columnist for The Christian Century magazine):
...Martin Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services[said,] "You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope."
Professor Marty said that as a white person, he sticks out in the largely black congregation but is always greeted with warmth and hospitality. "It’s not anti-white," he said. "I don’t know anybody who’s white who walks out of there not feeling affirmed."
All the ad needs to convey is that Trinity Church has white members -- that fact alone will shock people and change the prism through which they view the whole subject -- that the white members are comfortable in the church and feel spiritually nourished by it, and that the few offensive comments culled from Rev. Wright's thousands of sermons are unrepresentative of their experience there. Anyone seeing such an ad would instantly "get" that the church (and the pastor) are different from the caricature that's been circulating. Those with whom it "just doesn't sit right" that Sen. Obama is a member there would grasp that the church offers far more that is positive than negative, and that's why he's there (exactly as he has said). Indeed, it might even produce backlash against the right wing, because voters would realize that once again, they'd been hoodwinked with a phony issue meant to demonize and to distract from the real issues.
If the Obama campaign feels it would look weak to air such an ad itself, then perhaps it could come from an independent source, in the vein of the will.i.am videos. And, since we know the right-wing 527s will promiscuously use the Wright footage this fall, such an ad will come in handy down the road as well. A statement by white members affirming Trinity Church flatly, inescapably contradicts the sinister implications of the Rev. Wright clips.
I am posting this diary because I can't think of a better way to get this suggestion seen by the Obama campaign. If you folks agree, and rec the diary, I think people who can act on it will see it.