[GCFL-discuss] A Tale of Two Free Rides

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Interesting news. And some great points. I heard the other day someone
saying Both Hillary and Obama on the ticket. I'm not sure the Democrats
would have much success if they had to split their votes twice to the
Republicans 1.

Lance

On 5/1/08, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net>
wrote:
>
> 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.
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