[GCFL-discuss] A Tale of Two Free Rides

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Anyone care to beta test this for me?

Siarlys

Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Hillary Rodham Clinton have something in
common...

...both are getting a free ride and access to a national audience on
someone else's tail.

Orlando syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker pointed out a couple of
months ago that if Hillary Clinton were a man, she would not be running
for president. She would never have been Mrs. Bill Clinton, she would
never have been a national figure, she would never have run for senator
from New York. (Parker has been doing some thoughtful commentary on how
race and gender do and do not affect voting. She also observed that Mitt
Romney had all the personal characteristics which would have made him a
perfect candidate if only he were a black Baptist woman.)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has now emerged onto the national scene by a similar
process.

Rev. Wright was doing a fine job as pastor of a large and thriving local
church in Chicago. People in Pennsylvania would never have heard of him,
if a member of his church had not been running for president. Until the
past week or so, people could watch his sermons on U-Tube, if they
wanted, and applaud, or grimace, or denounce, but they were Rev. Wright's
business. Barack Obama was free to agree with his pastor, or disagree,
because Rev. Wright was being a local pastor and Obama was running for
president.

But in the past week, Rev. Wright has been offered several national
platforms. That has become a very different matter than slicing and
dicing whether the man running for president should have been a member of
a church where such-and-such was said in some sermon or other. Wright was
not offered these platforms because the national media became impressed
with his decades of pastoral care in Chicago. He was offered these
platforms because, and only because, a member of his church is running
for president. Now he's not simply doing his job for his church as he and
his congregation see fit. He's crashing someone else's party.

Rev. Wright has become quite drunk with the opportunity, and never
stopped to examine the trap he was walking into. Nobody offering him
these venues, with the possible exception of the NAACP, was interested in
explaining "the black church" to "white America." They were interested in
the sound bytes available from presenting "Barack Obama's Pastor" on
their show. Like it or not, Rev. Wright appeared on stage as a campaign
issue, not as a an exponent of theology. He should have declined. He
should have said, 'if you want to do a story on Trinity United Church of
Christ, you can come to our church, talk to me and our members, about the
work and history of the church. If you want to talk about Barack Obama's
campaign for president, go talk to him, I'm not him, I'm me.'

(Shades of Langston Hughes's beloved Jesse B. Semple, whose "white" boss
told him "You speak for The Negro," to be told straight up "I do not. I
speak for my own self.")

Or, Rev. Wright should be honest enough to say "Hey, I didn't want Barack
Obama to run for president, and I don't want him to be elected. He is
going to be leading a government I consider hopelessly entangled in sin
and oppression. I could care less what impact I have on his campaign. If
he loses, well, that just proves to me everything I believe about
America. I'm going to get whatever I can off of all this attention, not
for him, for me." That increasingly appears to be an accurate
characterization of Rev. Wright. He may even be correct: but, as The
Revolution does not appear to be on the horizon, other citizens may be
forgiven if we try to elect a capable president who might do some good.

Maybe we will see campaign commercials featuring some of Rev. Wright's
most inflammatory comments, juxtaposed to a voice-over "This man fears
that the election of Barack Obama will disprove his most inflammatory
teaching. Its up to us to prove that Rev. Wright is wrong." Of course the
Obama campaign would never run such a sleazy back-handed commercial. But
some independent .org could do so. Hey, it works for the Republicans.

Asking how Barack Obama could belong to a church led by Rev. Wright is
like asking how Hillary Clinton could stay in a White House where Bill
did some awful things. It would be truly ironic if our first woman
president was a mere surrogate for her husband, like Lurleen Wallace as
governor in Alabama. When Bill was denied re-election as governor of
Arkansas, part of his campaign for a comeback two years later was that
his wife campaigned as Mrs. Bill Clinton. An early exponent of the Vast
Right-Wing Conspiracy crowed about that in a syndicated column. On her
own dime, Hillary Rodham Clinton has seven years in public office, not
thirty years experience in government. On his own dime, Rev. Jeremiah
Wright is a capable pastor of a church with 8000 members, not a national
political figure.