I wish we would stop talking about Rev. Wright because he is not Barack Obama. The actual Presidential candidate, Obama, has already said that Wright doesn't speak for him and that he doesn't agree with everything the Reverend has said. Some of it actually bothers and offends him. Yet, Kossacks feel the impulse to continue mounting a defense of Rev. Wright.
Stop doing that. Stop doing it because Rev. Wright shouldn't matter, and you just keep the controversy alive by taking it on the merits. That's a pointless argument to be having now, and it certainly won't help Obama. Stop defending Wright because what he has said doesn't matter.
However, you should also stop defending Wright because some of it really is indefensible. I don't write this because it's important. I write this because we need to move on. I had tabled this diary for a few weeks, but since Wright is back, perhaps it's time I published it. Please don't dismiss me as a 'concern troll'. Hear me out on this one.
For a brief time, I was defending Wright, including against charges of anti-semitism. Many Jews were uncomfortable with him, because of his position on Israel, and I defended his right to hold that position without being called anti-Semitic. Then, I read his famous letter to the New York Times, and I realized something important. Rev. Wright may be anti-Semitic. Certainly, I find this letter to reveal a man who resents Jews and feels he must pander in dealing with them. I don't say this to smear the man. He is of a certain generation, and such feelings are not uncommon in his generation. I just think it might be instructive to point out how his letter might be indicative of a certain cluelessness in his view of others...and why his more controversial statements can rub folks the wrong way.
I won't say that there is a deeply anti-semitic remark buried in his letter to the New York Times. There isn't any one remark that I find compelling or clearly damning, in this regard. It really is the tenor of his remarks. The whole letter reads almost like a bad parody of what a bigot might say and write to "prove" he's not anti-Semitic -- making numerous gratuitious cultural references to show he's actually worldly, and not ignorant of the other culture. It's a pandering, transparent effort to influence others by making your points using "their" cultural reference points.
I don't know if he knew the reporter to be Jewish, or merely assumed she was, or whether he asked her about it. It doesn't matter -- the reporter was there to learn about Obama, and also Rev. Wright -- but, he kept working in awkward, patronizing references to Judaism.
Honestly, if I had faked that letter and his comments in the article, people would have attacked me, saying that Wright isn't that obtuse or ignorant. But, I didn't fake it. He gave this interview and wrote this letter -- in seeming ignorance of the fact that the New York Times really isn't the Jew York Times.
In point of fact, there is one comment that I find especially troubling on numerous levels: His gratuitous reference to his expectation of kinder treatment, given what he sees as the Times' need to repent and his "faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana" (sic).
The interview was obviously sometime after Obama's speech last February 10th, but before the article ran the first week of March. In fact, Wright makes reference to Lent, as well. The "spirit of" Rosh Hashanah is something you might speak of around the period of the High Holidays, in September, or early October.
Expecting that "spirit" in February, or writing in March to castigate Jews for not honoring the spirit of that holiday -- that's like a Jew trying to get charity from a Christian group, and suggesting they could be more generous..."y'know...in the spirit of Christmas" -- it would be like that, if the appeal to the spirit of Xmas was made in the middle of June.
The comment is also disturbing on another level in that it reveals enormous arrogance and hubris. Wright expected the Times to ignore the real news he gave in the interview, and just do a fluff-piece, as some sort of karmic do-over for the Times' failure to be more critical of the Bush Adminidtration's case for war. But, I don't want to overdo the psychoanalysis, and I really don't want to focus on just the one statement either. It really is the whole thing, and the attitude it betrays, that I find troubling.
Here's what I wrote about it before, when Kossacks asked me to explain my prior comments about the letter:
"You asked what he wrote that I find objectionable -- I'll try this --
Why would someone write to the New York Times, saying that he expected better treatment from the paper, because of his
"faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana"
???
He wanted repentance from all those Jews at the New York Times. And, I'd guess he meant more than just repentance for Judith Miller's war-drum articles.
Without saying it, he thinks those Jews have more to repent form and should show him and Barack much admiration and respect. Wonder what he really thinks about why those Jewy Jews at the New York Times should be repenting and why they should have fawned over him and Obama? You don't have to think too hard for your answer. It's not just Iraq.
This reference to the "Jewish Holy Day" of Rosh Hashanah is particularly insulting because the interview was conducted during the end of February -- almost a full half-year off of the Ten Days of Atonement that begin with Rosh Hashanah. It's as if a Jewish person expressed anger and disappointment at the small size of a charitable donation from a wealthy Christian, saying he expected better because of his own faith in the spirit of Christmas...even though the appeal was made in June or July. It's just incredibly inappropriate. It's ignorant, and sounds vaguely prejudiced.
Even during his interview, it's obvious that he didn't see himself talking to a reporter for a national newspaper. He saw himself as trying to reach out to a Jewish reporter with the Jewy Jew York Times. He speaks of the stories he told the reporter -- her
"own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible".
Not to mention his stressing how important it was that Obama was a man who
"a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews".
Even in the article, he's quoted as telling the reporter that he got the call disinviting him on Friday afternoon. just
"hours before Shabbos."
Very clever of him to know when the Jewish Sabbath begins, and clever to use the Yiddish pronunciation. Also, incredibly f'ing patronizing and gratuitous -- as it would be if I suddenly started talking using "ebonics" to address a black reporter.
This is the stuff I'd expect to hear from Archie Bunker on 'All in the Family,' if that character had been a bit more articulate.
If you're not seeing it the way I did, perhaps an analogy would help illustrate what I see. Try to think of it in this way:
Let's suppose it was a letter from a Rabbi complaining about an editorial in a urban "black" newspaper - maybe the Detroit Free-Press, or maybe even something like the Defender. And let's say the Rabbi writes
"How could you say such terrible things? I told you those stories from your Zulu griots to make my point about...."
The Rabbi goes on to say:
"It's so wonderful that we have this Jewish man who understands their are different kinds of blacks, that there is a difference between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks, between descendants of southern slaves and recent Caribbean and African immigrants".
And then he closes by saying
"I expected better from you given the spirit of Kwanzaa".
Then you read the article, and there's a quote from the Rabbi -- about how he got this call,, disinviting him from the announcement later in the week -- that he got this call
"on Sunday morning, just hours before mass while all that fried chicken was cooking for the church social."
That's basically what he's getting at by mentioning the approach of the Sabbath.
How's that sounding to you now?"
My discourse on this fictional Rabbi is obvious parody of ignorance bigotry, and yet it's a parallel to what Wright actually said and wrote...
I've refrained from bringing this up earlier in my post, because it seems a bit extreme, but I can't dismiss this, given his other loaded remarks. While those remarks seem more ignorant and clumsy, rather than malicious, I think there may be coded, latent anti-Semitism in the whole theme of the letter. He writes of
"duplicitous behavior"
by the reporter and the newspaper.
If this letter was written to a reporter for a publication serving the Chinese or Japanese community, I think people in that community might hear that language as being loaded -- fraught with racial stereotyping.
I think perhaps we can ask if he wasn't thinking the same -- the same uly ethnic stereotype -- about the Jewish audience he thought he was addressing at the newspaper.
It was an enormously tacky letter, and frankly, a really icky interview, too.
I still think it doesn't matter, because Wright is a stupid distraction -- a sideshow. However, I think he's shown real antipathy toward Jews. It should have no bearing on Obama's candidacy, but there it is. Frankly, Wright would do Obama a lot of good, if he admitted that he has dealt with Jews in an ignorant manner and apologize for that. He's intent on defending himself, but I'm not sure it's all that defensible. If he wants to help Obama, he should acknowledge that not every thing he has said was pure or fair.
This diary will be my last word on the subject. I'm not so naive to think it is THE last word, but I sure wish it would be.