Defenders of Rev. Jeremiah Wright suggest that those of us who have criticized the man should look deeper into his past and his character, to reach the conclusion that he’s not at all the hate-filled fringe figure portrayed by hysterical excerpts from two dozen different sermons and columns.
With that investigation in mind, I’ve come across a letter from a year ago (March 11, 2007) that shows precisely the sort of raging, out-of-control, demagogic creep that’s appalled the whole world with the deranged rantings featured on U-tube.
Last month, Dr. Wright wrote to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times to protest an article she had written on the Obama campaign based in part on an interview with the pastor. In the course of that letter, Wright never claimed he had been misquoted or that the Times had misled its readers about his sentiments. He objected, rather, that Ms. Kantor had used only a brief segment of a two-hour interview – a common journalistic practice, obviously.
Nevertheless, he began the letter with the following declaration (underlining in the original):
Dear Jodi:
Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years .
He went on to ramble about the lavish praise for Obama that he had conveyed during a lengthy interview but which Ms, Kantor failed to report, and then to denounce her for selecting only one portion of their conversation:
As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.
I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.
Surely, even Rev. Wright’s apologists must find this hyperbole a bit troubling. The man has been a controversial public figure for years, for decades. Is it really possible that he has “never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before”? If so, then Reverend Wright has led a charmed life indeed.
Even more worrisome, is his summary of Obama as “this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.”
To Pastor Wright, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t honest (sorry, Honest Abe)?
George Washington, not honest (a slave-owner, yes, but one who made arrangements to free all his slaves in his will)?. John Adams (the HBO mini-series accurately shows a fearlessly honest leader)? Theodore Roosevelt? Harry Truman? Dwight Eisenhower? Ronald Reagan?
Or what about all the defeated candidates – none of them honest? Not William Jennings Bryan, or George McGovern, or Barry Goldwater, or Jesse Jackson, or Norman Thomas, or Barack’s fellow Illinoisan, Adlai Stevenson.
It’s only natural for Obama enthusiasts to describe their golden boy as the best candidate ever to “offer himself” but it’s something else again to describe him as “the first (and maybe even only) honest candidate.”
It’s precisely the sort of fringe perspective, the wacky, feverish, apocalyptic derangement that comes across in Pastor Wright’s sermons as so disturbing and unwholesome.
For most Americans who have so far resisted the Obama kool-aid, there’s something unavoidably creepy in a “movement” that swings wildly between the twin polarities of ruthless political operation and glassy-eyed, messianic cult.