Obama essentially broke all ties today with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. After months of controversies stemming from comments made by his Chicago Pastor, he felt that his political career was more valuable than the relationship with the man who married him and baptized his children. While this is his decision, and probably the correct one for his campaign, I can't help but notice the duality between what we expect from Obama, and what we expect from McCain.
Rev. Wright's comments are inflammatory but not without merit.
We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and The Pentagon"he said in a sermon about the 9-11 bombings.
Rev. Jerry Falwell's response to the same incident:
"...the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen."When compared to this nonsense, Wright's comments almost seem insightful and enlightened.
Rev. Wright's sermons and comments are the angry screams of another generation, one that has faced many trials and suffered many abuses, most of them from white men in positions of power. His church, a "black church" as he describes it, is based on the idea of sticking together to fight these abuses, to get a support network against what was for centuries a history of injustice and exploitation of the black community. Society today has made great strides towards changing its attitudes and making amends for the mistakes of the past, and while America as a whole might want to forget, it seems comical to expect Rev. Wright and and those who lived through the abuses, to simply forgive and forget. Yet rarely are these issues brought up when talking about Rev. Wright. He's dismissed as another "angry black man". Because of this anger, Sen. Obama has been pressured to distance and break ties with Rev. Wright.
On the other side of the aisle, we have people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the mad prophets of the Christian Conservative right. In his 2000 bid for the Presidential nomination, Sen. McCain said
Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.A sentiment that I completely agree with. Yet 6 years later he was forced to eat his words, due to the amount of political power that these fear-mongering, hateful, extremist pastors have in the Republican right. Their words don't come from a history of abuse and oppression, they come from a fire and brimstone worldview, in which they create and use fear and hate to maintain power. While Rev. Wright's comments can be understood as frustrations, Falwell's words only seem to support the very mindset that created the need for a "Black Church" to begin with. Yet instead of having to distance themselves from maniacs like Robertson and Falwell, Republican contenders are forced to grovel at their feet.
When talking about the duality of America, this is one of the clearest examples I can see. Obama is forced to condemn the "angry black-man" Pastor that married him, while McCain issues a statementthat a racist, bigoted, homophobe like Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."
I'm not saying that the right needs to cut all its ties to Religion, but McCain needs to regain the chutzpah to once again distance himself from these lunatic preachers of hatred, just as Obama had to denounce his.
