So, I pick up a few snippets of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's interview with Bill Moyers, which I guess will air in its entirety tomorrow night. And I think, as I watch him, "Oh good. Now the American viewing public can see for themselves that this guy's not a fanatic nor a hysteric, but in fact, a thoughtful, quietly charismatic man with a long history of community activism behind him. They will hear that he preached for 41 years; they will see the pain on his face over the controversy. He'll be humanized, and we can all move on."
NOT!
At least not if CNN can help it.
Stirred up by Campbell Brown announcing that the Wright "headache" had become a "migraine" (who writes this crap?), David Gergen, that lipless, chinless wonder (I'm sorry, I can't help it), submits that Wright's coming forward will do endless damage to Obama. He has dismissed his parishioner as a "politician"; he has brought the issue back into the media (as if! Did he hear about those friggin' North Carolina Repubican ads?")
"What was he thinking?" the automated Gergen opines -- with no one, really, to counter him. Roland Martin can't pull it together to dismiss Gergen's twisting of reality; the phonier-than-Hillary family-values nutcase whose name I shall not mention for fear of contributing to his ill-begotten fame, was free to spout platitudes about Why We Pray. Like he really does.
It's like I turn on the television, see something interesting, and then almost immediately find myself bombarded with somebody telling me WHAT IT MEANS. And by doing so, that hollow pundit then defines what it means for all of America. Only political junkies will know better than to accept former Nixon/Reagan/Clinton adviser David Rodham Gergen's interpretation of events (could he be the one who also silenced Lani Guinier?). Others -- my friends, even -- will not have or take the time to see the Moyers show; instead, they'll catch the commentary on CNN and conclude that Wright made a grievous error revealing himself on national television at such a sensitive time.
The opposite is really true. But who will break past the spin to know it?
"Citizens. Patriots. There's trouble in the mine. Drop what you're doing. There's trouble in the mine." - Laurie Anderson
"YOU'RE HURTING AMERICA!" - Jon Stewart
"We demonize our opponents. We see things as two-sided rather than multidimensional. We seem to have lost our political will to confront rather than to condemn our problems." - Lani Guinier
UPDATE: This morning when I saw that this had 99 comments, I thought, "Oh, great!" Then I saw that some 50 of those -- the first 50 I read -- side with Gergen: Rev. Wright should just shut up. So perhaps I didn't make my case very well.
But after I got over the shock of the comments declaring that indeed, silence is good for democracy, I went back and read the rest. And I found this one, from Jennifer Clare, which makes a better case for me. I'm lifting out of the teeming masses so more people will see it. (Keep in mind that as she begins, she is speaking facetiously):
[Rev. Wright] should just shut up and hide away so that the media can continue to destroy him and define him. He should just put up with the death threats to him and his family. He should just quietly endure the smearing of his career, his reputation and his accomplishments.
Why? So that we can elect one of his parishoners, a gentleman who we must not at any time point out is a politician. Because everyone knows, "politicians" are inherently horrible, and Obama cannot possibly be one.
Great, people. The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who has sacrificed for and served his country for over 5 decades, should just shut up because a bunch of us are afraid of the fricking right wing traditional media. Let 'em destroy him, because we have (as Dick Cheney once did), "other priorities".
Why should progressives defend our values? Hell, the neocons have been defining us for so long that we may just as well accept their definitions and their values?!
That is nuts and I will not accept it. I will not demonize a good man whom the right wants to demonize in order to elect another good man who is campaigning to be our next President. Because to do so only demonizes two good men who have a long history of service to our country.
Thanks, Jennifer Clare. That's what I meant to say.