All The Wright Moves

So, while I knocking together my last post and not watching the Sunday morning bobblehead shows, Howard Dean and his Mighty Band of Fightin' Democrats 2.0 fanned out across the airwaves and started doing exactly what I advocated in my last post.

They started to hit back.

And hard.

Howard Dean on FOX, against Chris Wallace.  (via C&L):

Dean: Chris, the Republicans…for the last 30 years, the Republican (play)book has been to race bait and to use hate and divisiveness. In 2006, the American people said no to that; I think they’re going to say no to that in 2008. It is true that the economy, the war and healthcare are more important to the American people. They are tired of the divisiveness of what the Republicans have done to them. And that’s why the Republicans are in trouble. Deep trouble. Another four years of George Bush is not what we need…

Wallace: Governor, are you suggesting that bringing up Jeremiah Wright is “race-baiting” and hate and divisive?

Dean: Yeah, I am suggesting that kind of stuff. I think when you start bringing up candidates that have nothing to do with the issues…uh when you start bringing up things that have nothing to do with the candidate, nothing to do with the issues, that’s race-baiting. And that’s exactly what it is. Just like Willie Horton was race-baiting so many years ago. I think we’re going to take…we’re going to turn the page on this stuff. I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats on issues, but the biggest issue of all is we don’t use this kind of stuff. We never have used this kind of stuff and we’re not going to start now. America is more important than the Republican party and that’s the lesson the voters are about to teach the Republicans.

And, Charlie Rangel (my congressman, BTW) a Clinton supporter (also via C&L):

Blitzer: The criticism of Barack Obama is that what Jeremiah Wright said at the National Press Club, Congressman Rangel, was no different than what he’s been saying for some time, and he should have known that these controversial remarks would be made. Is this explanation that Senator Obama is making good enough for you?

Rangel: It’s disgraceful that he has to make any explanation for anything. The intrusion of the media and Republicans into the sacred relationship that worshipers have with their spiritual leaders I think is going to come back to haunt us. To think that we have to go into the lives and the beliefs of Rabbis and Priests and ministers and Imams is absolutely ridiculous. We’ve got a war on. We’ve got an economy that’s splintered. I think the media should be more responsible and start dealing with those issues. I don’t think many people care what reverend Wright thinks and I don’t see why any candidate should have to explain what ..

Blitzer: But Congressman, even Senator Obama last Sunday said this was a legitimate issue given the nature of — He wants to be President of the United States. If there’s a right wing politician, let’s say a Republican politician that has an extraordinarily close relationship with a pastor who is making outrageous statements has been a member of that church for 20 years. Wouldn’t that be fair game?

Rangel: Of course not. Of course he’s a candidate. He doesn’t want to take all of you on and I’m probably over the hill but the truth is that you guys know that his beliefs have nothing to do with someone that went to the church, and if we’ve got to get into the Jerry Falwell’s and into the Robertson’s and to the number of people who have what appears to other religions to be bizarre beliefs we’ll never get to the issues that Americans were concerned about. I know that every American is more concerned with who is going to be a better Presidential candidate and a better President more than they are on anything that happens in the church that Senator Obama went to

This is the kind of party we should be, not Hillary and her husband's capitulating horde of Republican-Lite quislings.

A Little More to the Wright

Once again, I find really smart people agreeing with me. OK, maybe not agreeing with me per se, but writing things that I have already written, just, you know, (vastly) more widely-read and articulate.

Today's winner is the former "Butcher of Broadway" Frank Rich in the Sunday Times, in an op-ed titled "The All-White Elephant in the Room."

it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

[...]

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement.

[...]

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000.

[...]

Mr. McCain is graded on a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low.

[...]

if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin.

I wish I could promise that this will be my last post about Jeremiah Wright, but I can't as long as the blowhards in the media insist on making this an issue. Thus, I will highlight any major media figure who participates in the proper kind of pushback.

In other words, Obama should not have needed to apologize or reject or denounce Wright. Not that I want to adopt anything that Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun may have foisted upon our political establishment, but his 11th Commandment applies here: we have got to stop eating our own. Obama's message should have been STFU about my preacher until you denounce your pet squad of hate-spewing Christo-fascist bigots.

Of course, Hillary triangulating herself into pretzel knots to win those elusive Rethugli-bot Lite votes hasn't helped the blue end of the spectrum rally to the defense of their standard-bearer.

Except, of course, Obama can't say any of that because we can always depend on the cable news bobbleheads to regurgitate GOP talking points undigested (from C&L):

Duffy: There’s no question they’ll come after him any way they can. And everyone who supports Obama will get a version of this too. They’ll be asked to account for it, they’ll be asked to put some distance between them. McCain himself will probably say something like “I’m not going to make Rev. Wright’s views an issue,” but he’s made it already clear that he disagrees with him, so I think you can expect the entire Republican establishment to make this issue #1—unless something better comes along.

Matthews: Can a brilliant politician – Barack included, perhaps, perhaps – turn this around? Can he show that he’s different? So different from the Rev. Wright that he should be elected President?

Morehead: I think he’s already shown that. He’s already said before that he does not believe what Wright said, he was at church—was not at church that day. But obviously, he’s someone who says, “I want to bring the country together, let’s get beyond this issue of being divisive. Let’s talk about what we have more in common than what we have in terms of our differences,” So I think he’s going to be able to use this as a way to bring the country together, as opposed to using this as a division the Republicans and McCain are trying to use this for.

Matthews: Does everyone agree with that? That he can turn this around or he’s just going to have to cut his losses?

Genardo: I don’t. I interviewed him the other day and I don’t think he distanced himself far enough from his pastor, actually telling me all the great things he had done on the South Side of Chicago. Rev. Wright, that is. I don’t know, politically, you’d think he’d have to come out and really condemn his remarks and I know we already got him—got rid of him on his faith and values team, but is that enough? I don’t think so.

What would be enough? As the ever-brilliant and incisive Amanda Marcotte said the first time the Wright non-issue issue exploded: "America will not rest until Obama says Jesus had blue eyes."

Because it is about race. It will always be about race. It is but one facet of America's Original Sin, a stain on our national soul that cannot be expunged, and for forty years the GOP has used it (as the Democrats did before them) to maintain their failing grip on power. Remember, this issue is ginned-up by slick College-Rethugligoon-trained operators who - abetted by bloated, self-important media dunderheads like Chris Matthews - love to fire up the bigots in "The Base." Wind 'em up and watch 'em go... all the way to electoral victory.

The slick operators also love the idea of the "crazy black preacher" because not only does it overtly tap the fear buttons of white voters, but the mental image of the "angry black man" also covertly facilitates a verbal shorthand for talking about race in dog-whistle code language that keeps it masked from polite society, but is nevertheless understood by those who want to hear it.

Such methods once again resurrect Nixon's odious Southern Strategy. I don't mean via direct appeals to the overtly racist parts of the Rethugli-bot coalition, the 'Minutemen' or neo-Nazis or KKK or any other domestic terror groups; they are already on board with the fundamental tenet of any political right-wing in any country - protect and reinforce existing power structures. I refer instead to those who are afraid of ostracisation from our modern, more evolved and supposedly post-racial society, to those who still quietly blame all our modern problems on the Civil Rights Era and "those people." They romanticize a simpler, whiter past - like "The 1950's" or "Gone With The Wind."

The slick operators of the GOP gleefully tap into a deep-seated, secret desire of this portion of "The Base" to once again have the freedom to enjoy the sensation of the word "nigger" crossing their lips just one more time.

We all know people like this. Chances are, many of them are our relatives or co-workers. GOP operatives know they are out there. Obama knows they are out there. Media dunderheads know they are out there and romanticize them as heartland, salt-of-the-earth types, the Real Americans. Which is why they and the Party that represents them and the nominee of that Party all get graded on a curve when it comes to race relations.

Ahh, the soft bigotry of low expectations.

The racial component will remain undeniable for both sides, but for very different and morally divergent reasons. On that score, Gary Kamiya at Salon.com wrote what has become probably the central opinion piece in my conversion from Obama doubter to Obama supporter. The title of his essay is "It's OK to vote for Obama because he's black." He wrote it in February of this year, before most of us had ever even heard of Jeremiah Wright.

whites' race-driven enthusiasm for Obama is an almost unreservedly positive thing -- both because electing a black president is a good thing in its own right, and because of what that enthusiasm says about race relations in America today.

Yes, there can be a touch of bathos and self-congratulation in white Obama-mania. But so what? Great historical shifts are often accompanied by such feelings. Besides, sincerity and sentimentality are not mutually exclusive. Barack is no Magic Negro. The truth is, the more white voters find out about Obama, the more they like him.

[...]

Having a black president would give the country a deeper comfort level in talking about racial issues. It would help Americans of all races break out of the sterile guilt/victim dialogue, or the fear of falling into it, that too often inhibits real communication. It could radically change our entire racial landscape, in ways we can't even predict.

[...]

Many dismiss the Obama phenomenon as a mere "cult of personality." It is in some ways a cult, but not one of personality -- it's a cult of racial healing, of racial transcendence. For many whites, voting for Obama is a kind of appeal to one's better self, and the better self of the country. It is, in a way, a promise. It could even be seen as a kind of prayer.

[...]

there's every reason to believe that if elected he will be a good president -- and maybe a great one. And every day that Obama is in office, even the bad ones, we'll be able to tell ourselves: We elected a black man president of this country. That thought, with all that it says about where we came from as a nation and where we hope to be going, will be a light that no one can put out.

I Guess I'm All-Wright Now

From BAGNewsNotes:

Presented by Bill Moyers during his extended interview with the Reverend earlier this week, the photo shows six-year veteran and Naval cardiopulmonary technician, Jeremiah Wright (beyond the I.V. stand), monitoring President Johnson's heart as he recovers from gall bladder surgery at Bethesda.

March of the Charlatans

Tin-Foil Hat time again, folks.

As all of you know, I just love me some big, juicy conspiracy theory. I think it must have something to do with being born and raised in the cradle of modern American conspiracy theory: Dallas, Texas - November '63 and grassy knolls and magic bullets and all of that - so, as I see it, rich & powerful white men pretty much invade, assassinate, blow up and destroy at will under the guise of what we normally call "politics." They rig elections, intimidate voters and generally undermine the opposition as often and as maliciously as any common thug or tyrant in any third-world banana-republic backwater. Money and global influence just make their actions seem less like outright crimes against decency and humanity and more like, a-hem, respectable official government policy.

But they still don't want the wrong people voting, that's for sure. Or having actual input into the process.

So, despite my paranoid mindset, I can actually be correct enough to sometimes have someone respectable say the same thing, but with proof and all that fancy, journalistic stuff, and man, I just love it when I'm smart enough to anticipate the more nuanced and articulate points of someone smarter and more gifted with the language.

Sara Robinson is one of those people. She is a sometimes contributor to the brilliant and incisive "big picture" blog Orcinus, as well as writing for the Campaign for America's Future. This week she takes on the Jeremiah Wright non-story story.

She explains it all to you, about why the media just won't let this one go - basically because they are under orders from on high to destroy a respected and vocal critic of the "Word of Life" prosperity gospel charlatans. You know who these people are, those transparently crooked Chri$tian operators who, by way of preaching that "God helps those who help themselves," makes it the fault of the poor for being that way and wealth becomes its own proof of virtue.

Thus, by their solipsistic logic, the private jets and exotic golf trips and luxury cars of the church leaders become evidence of fealty to God's Good Word (paid for with the accumulated tithes from desperate widows on fixed incomes, BTW) and something to strive for, while if you're poor it's your fault for not believing hard enough in Jesus. It's a gospel tailor-made for the "I've Got Mine" ethos of Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun's modern Church of the GOP. Government attempts to help the poor interfere with God's Will. Wealth proves God's Love.

Among the denizens of this rapacious, sleazy milieu, Jeremiah Wright is not a popular man.

Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP's new pet theology over the years -- one of a noisy clutch of ministers who've made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He's also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding (Martin Luther) King's torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they're helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate.

Beyond that: unlike the vast majority of these ministers, most of whom attended small Bible colleges of dubious accreditation (if they attended seminary at all), Wright has degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Theological Seminary. It's gotta go down hard that he's a black man who is far better-educated than they are, and can argue circles around them about the Bible or anything else. Take it as a whole picture, and it's not hard to see that Wright is very sharp thorn in these people's sides. As long as he and his friends are out there, their 30-year investment in the whole Word of Life movement is at risk. Obama's candidacy put him in the spotlight, and thus magnified the threat. So now he has very powerful enemies on the religious and political right.

Yet, the media - with all the depth and subtlety one can portray in a five-second sound-bite - get to depict this educated and articulate man as some kind of buffoon, a dancing clown hardly above the level of a minstrel show, thereby undermining his dangerous message by killing the messenger. Rod Parsley, John Hagee and their fellow band of thieves are truly enjoying watching their long-time critic be dismantled. Hence:

turning Wright into a national demon was a two-fer. They could not only tank the Democrats' front-runner; they'd also take down a serious and persuasive theologian who's been calling them out hard on one of their longest-running and most successful efforts to sell the conservative worldview to the very people who stand to be most harmed by it.

So, Wright is correct when he says that an attack on him is an attack on the black church. And I was correct for agreeing with him. Although, in all fairness, my assertion was that this whole kerfuffle was an attack on the black church generally as a center of stability and independent power within the Democratic coalition (which frustrates and pisses off the Reich-wing collaborators within the Dems) rather than a coordinated attack from The Right on a threat to their prosperity and power.

I guess it seemed a little too obvious to think it was somehow, once again, related to the Rethugli-bots. Over-compensating for fear of sounding like a broken record, I was just looking in the wrong place. Although, in my defense, wide swaths of the Dems are nevertheless still willing to capitulate to yet another attack from the GOP goon squad, laundered as it is through a compliant media.

Like I said, this one is going to get ugly. These people have had a collective chip on their shoulders about the wimmin-folk and the uppity neeg-ras and the Lib-ruhl "coastal elites" for about, well, the entire history of the republic. Or thereabouts. Every so often, they get the upper hand in politics and the last four decades, they have been ascendant. The old-money GOP has successfully leveraged the anger of the rubes' and shit-kickers' since the Goldwater debacle in '64 into electoral success, which serves their ultimate purpose of undermining anyone who truly threatens their privileged lifestyles as some form of the "dirty fucking hippie," fear and loathing for whom is the only thing that unites the disparate Coalition of Hate in the GOP.

Some within the coalition have been itching for a race war since the 1960's. Some have been itching for a religious war since the 1960's. Some have been itching for a class war since the 1960's.

If all of this race-baiting and ecclesiastical hornet's nest-whacking goes deeply, terribly wrong (as playing with fire usually does), especially as the other looming catastrophes mature into actual news stories as opposed to the end-of-broadcast curiosities they are right now (I'm referring of course to Peak Oil and Climate Change), then they may just get all of those wars. All at once. It could turn into a Lockean war of all-against-all, which is the natural end-point of their asinine "libertarian" philosophy anyway. Until some hayseed nazi arises as a strong-man dictator to put a stop to all the violence, kind of like, well, any other thug or tyrant in any other third-world banana-republic backwater.

And if he's a good, Christian thug, then he'll get to have Blackwater as his private, Christian shadow army, shadow navy and shadow air-force - and secret police - all the better for keeping order.

But, then again, maybe it will all magically work itself out for the better.

Somehow.

Wright shouldn't matter

I was going to write a post about the whole Jeremiah Wright torpedo-ing Barack Obama thing that has the inter-webs lit up like a christmas tree for the last few days, but then I read John Cole and he pretty much said what I was going to say:

Maybe it is because I am totally and unrepentantly in the tank for Obama, but I just can’t get worked up over what his pastor said. Maybe it is because I am not religious, and I am used to religious people saying things that sound crazy. Or maybe I just refuse to spend any more time and energy getting worked up over and denouncing, distancing, and rejecting the wrong people- people who really don’t matter in the big scheme of things. If you have a memo from Jeremiah Wright to John Yoo showing how we should become a rogue nation, let me know. If you have pictures of Jeremiah Wright voting against the GI Bill, send it to me. If you have evidence of Jeremiah Wright training junior soldiers on the finer aspects of stacking and torturing naked Iraqi captives, pass them on.

Until then, I just can’t seem to get all worked up about the crazy scary black preacher that Obama has to “throw under the bus.”

So, yeah. Whatever. And fuck all the rest of them (the media, the wingers, those nervous-nellie liberal Democrats, various bloggers - hell, for that matter, even you, if Reverend Wright makes you a little uneasy) for getting all judgmental and sanctimonious about the somewhat unhinged rantings but nevertheless highly entertaining ravings of a man who has faithfully served his community for three decades, helping the poor, ministering to his flock and generally acting like, well, what all those titular X-tians out there claim a Christian should.

You know, walking the walk.

So if he's a little off his rocker, I frankly don't have a problem with it. I think religion is stupid anyway and we've all got kooky people in our lives who we love and cherish nevertheless so it's a whole lot of so what. If Johm McSame and the whole rest of the Rethugli-bot goon squad all get a pass on Hagee (and Robertson and Falwell and Randall Terry and ...), then Wright isn't too far wrong when he claims that the recent events have been an attack on the black church. I think his essential meaning has been willfully mis-represented. From what I've seen on tee-vee and online, some seem to have been spinning his claim to mean the people attacking him were attacking the notion of black faith as different from or less-than white faith and then pretending to be shocked by that straw man.

I think that is disingenuous. Nobody, except for the most virulent racists in the GOP, thinks that the way black people choose to internalize their god is deficient when compared to the way white people do it. The claim hardly makes sense, except to a bigot or a Nazi.

I think Wright is correct because the black church is being attacked for being a source of organization and strength in the black community. In some places and in many ways, it is the only institution wholly their own. I don't see that, apart from my contempt for religiosity in general, as bad in any way whatsoever. The Limousine Liberals in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party can't have a block of voters with their own leadership, now can they? Like the netroots, they want our money and our votes and otherwise we are to STFU do as we are told. I told a friend of mine yesterday the same thing - in this instance, the black church and the blogs are in the same boat. We are a constituent block of the Democratic coalition and by golly, we just refuse to behave ourselves.

Sure. Because lockstep obedience in the GOP has served this nation and the world so very well. Habeas Corpus, anyone?

I know, I know. Louis Farrakhan. Booga-booga-booga! Whatever. Like I said, Wright is a loud-mouth kook who happens to admire another even larger-scale and anti-semitic loud-mouth kook, which I see simply as one powerful black man with a professional admiration for another powerful black man, however hateful and weird. Ma and Pa Peoria will of course get creeped out by all of it, but they still somehow also think he's a secret Muslim, in a Manchurian Candidate kind of way, and they also intentionally voted for George W. Bush twice because they think he's a good Christian man. And Reverend Wright is weird for thinking the US Gov't created AIDS to destroy the black community?

I will grant a few minor points. I think Wright is a tad bitter about Obama's success and doesn't want to be one of the ones left behind as this extraordinary person ascends the ladder of success. I also think he has enjoyed the spotlight and is trying to extend his 15 minutes. I also think he is drummning up publicity for a possible book. And I don't think any of it is particularly bad. Or, at least it doesn't have to be.

The fainting couches and clutched pearls aside, this whole kerfuffle is only a little bit about Obama and his loopy pastor. It is a whole lot about finding a way to torpedo a rising star and potentially very powerful black politician the likes of which this country has never seen because we in America are very much not post-racial. If the bobbleheads squeezing cable news talk-time out of this silliness didn't hang some crazy, America-hating Negro preacher around his neck, they, and the cackling GOP oppo-research gremlins who feed the Serious Journalists their "scoops," would together run some other fruit-loop up the flagpole who has some tenuous connection to the junior Senator from Illinois (who once may or may not have said or wrote some strange or offensive things) and thus find some other way prove Obama hates the troops.

Remember Glenn Greenwald's Five Steps to A Republican Presidency:

What is notable here is not so much the specific petty attacks, but rather the method by which they are disseminated and then entrenched as conventional wisdom among our Really Smart Political Insiders and Serious Journalists. This is the endlessly repeated process that occurred here:

STEP 1 A new Drudge-dependent gossip (Ben Smith) at a new substance-free political rag (The Politico)--or some rightwing talkradio host (Rush Limbaugh) or some credibility-bereft right-wing blogger (a Michelle Malkin)--seizes on some petty, manufactured incident to fuel clichéd caricatures of Democratic candidates.

STEP 2 The old right-wing gossip (Drudge) employs his old, substance-free political rag (The Drudge Report) to amplify the inane caricatures.

STEP 3 National media outlets, such as AP and CNN, whose world is ruled by Drudge, take note of and begin "analyzing" the "political implications" of the gossip, thus transforming it into "news stories."

STEP 4 Our Serious Beltway Journalists and Political Analysts--in the Haircut Case, Tim Russert and Brian Williams and Adam Nagourney and the very serious and smart Substantive Journalists at The New Republic--mindlessly repeat all of it, thereby solidifying it as transparent conventional wisdom.

STEP 5 When called upon to justify their endless reporting over such petty and pointless Drudge-generated matters, these "journalists" cite Steps 1-4 as "proof" that "the people" care about these stories, even though the "evidence" consists of nothing other than their own flocklike chirping.

Repeat steps 1-5 until the Republican is elected.

And that's why the Rethugli-bots will always get a pass on all their hate-spewing weirdos. Which is why we have to push back. Now. And hard. If we don't, they will continue to be able to beat us this way.

The last time America had a black leader anywhere close to Barack Hussein Obama's charisma, grace, stature and eloquence, white forces of racist hate dispatched him from a hotel in Memphis and black American leadership spent the next four decades in the wilderness. Four decades. Four decades of GOP ascendancy on the wings of Dixie-cratic bigotry coinciding with four decades of mockery and cartooning of any black political leader above the caliber of municipal dog-catcher have not been by accident.

Note that black athletes and entertainers are A-OK as role models, as long as they are fundamentally non-threatening, defined as "not too prone, either overtly nor implicitly, to asking really, really hard questions of white folks or demanding answers about the history race and class in America." You know, Bill Cosby and Magic Johnson instead of Immortal Technique and Alan Iverson.

Note also how if any members of the previous white-culture-approved categories of black prominence should try to get too political, they are mocked and cartooned, or dismissed as angry (as though black anger is somehow an ahistorical mystery). Recall how that "trouble-maker" MLK may have scared the white folk mightily, but Malcolm X scared 'em more.

And as the Rethugli-goon Revolution's agenda has failed on every single count except to enrich the old-money country club set who footed the bill for the whole party to begin with, racism is the only thing they have left to run on. On cue, Democrats offer them a black man. And don't worry, Hillary comes with her own built-in set of hate-buttons the Reich-wing puppet-masters will be pushing if she should filch the nomination. But Obama, by simple virtue of the color of his skin and his funny-sounding name, offers a ready-made smear template. It's like an old family recipe the Dixie-crats perfected generations ago they can now dust off and offer to the world. Like a bully who runs home to mama when someone finally hits back, this modern-day, ever more racist but disintegrating GOP is resurrecting the central tenant of Nixon's odious realignment "Southern" strategy: get white voters afraid of black anger. If Obama is not particularly angry, so what? He's heard of angry black people. He's met angry black people. He knows angry black people. He's even friends with some angry black people. How can the voting public (meaning "White Voting Public") not be certain that Barack Hussein Obama, too, isn't one of those angry black people who don't love America? Or Jesus?

Jeremiah Wright is just the kind of reminder White America needs that a deep pool of righteous black anger lies out there, latent, untapped and powerful. The slick operatives of the GOP have no qualms about using that truth to tap the white lizard brain. They can't help it. It's in the GOP's DNA. It really was too much to hope, I suppose, that we could have had a black man in a run for the White House without it coming down to race.

This is going to get very ugly.