Watch the video clip of Bill Moyers interviewing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and decide for yourself if Wright is the crazy, racist, unpatriotic zealot that the right-wing swiftboaters and shameless media pundits have made him out to be.
The despicable Bill O'Reilly has said of Wright: "As you may know, Reverend Wright was Barack Obama's pastor for 20 years. We now have proven beyond a reasonable doubt he is an anti-American guy and there's no question about it."
A few observations:
1. After watching the entire interview with Moyers, it is clear to me that Wright is a reasonable, well educated, and well-intentioned individual. He has a passion for preaching that has, on occasion, led him to say some incendiary things to his congregation. But he strikes me neither as racist nor as "Anti-American", whatever that's supposed to mean.
2. Why is Barack Obama being made to answer for the comments of his former pastor?
3. If some decision has been made that politicians are to be held accountable for comments made by those who endorse them, where is the media scrutiny over John Hagee? John "Free Ride" McCain has been relatively fellated by the media and by nutsacks like O'Reilly, Rove and Hannity, despite his endorsement by Hagee, a man who by all accounts is as batshit crazy as they come.
4. Finally, in true form, Dr. Roy misspells his way through another feast from Karl Rove's anus. God Bless "Anerica".
9 comments:
This entire fiasco disturbs me on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.
First, why is it that every candidate for high office in the US has to have a "spiritual advisor?" Seeing the ascension of a black man or a woman to the White House in my lifetime would be remarkable, but watching the election of someone who insists on keeping his faith (or lack thereof) as a private matter would be even more remarkable and even less likely.
Second, why does character assassination of these "spiritual advisors" seem to be as politically effective as character assassination of the candidates themselves? I'm no fan of Mitt Romney, but I find it maddening how much his campaign suffered from public discomfort with his Mormonism. Now, Republicans will have to decide whether its in their interests to define Obama as a Muslim, or a devotee of Liberation Theology (which is apparently just as bad).
Finally, Dr. Roy's blog is usually pretty amusing, but this is getting ridiculous. How can a man be so well educated, and yet still be borderline illiterate? I hope for his sake that his medical notes are more comprehensible than his posts. Mudfortunately, the College can be pretty tough about these things.
MD - You ask some very salient questions, ones that I have pondered myself. In particular, I'm quite intrigued by the virtual requirement for religiosity in American politics. Like you, I think it highly unlikely we will live to see the day an atheist or agnostic is elected President, or even that a Presidential campaign is run without mention of a candidate's religious views or affiliations.
Having said that, these blowhards like O'Reilly really could give a rat's ass about "faith". They are just using it as a tool to destroy Obama, as witnessed by the free pass they're giving McCain on Hagee.
And with respect to Dr. Roy, as amusing as his abuses of the English language are, I sometimes wonder why he even bothers. His posts are so formulaic, they could be generated by some kind of blog-bot:
"[insert right-wing columnist here] has a good kolum on how HM PM Harper is grate. also how pseudo-chretien was bad. dion is not a leeder."
[cut, paste & hypertext link entire column]
Repeat ad nauseum on a daily basis.
I have to confess that when I originally watched the clips of Wright preaching that were run in heavy rotation on CNN, Fox and elsewhere, they didn’t offend, shock or surprise me in the least.
First of all, it would be pretty ridiculous for any sensible person to derive much from those clips and having already checked this the Trinity Church’s website quite some time ago (because Hitchens was calling him a loon, so I wanted to see if there was any truth to that charge) it wasn’t hard to get the actual gist of what he was probably saying. Sure enough, for anyone who bothered to go beyond the little inflammatory excerpts and watch the whole sermon it was easy to see how they’d been taken out of context.
But most people are lazy and many will simply believe whatever people like Bill O and Hannity and the rest of these fatuous assclowns say without bothering to do their own research. And that category would most definitely include the mudfortunate “dr. roy” because he’s surely one of the LAZIEST and most intellectually dishonest bloggers around. It’s always easy to tell which way the truth lies — it will usually be in the complete opposite direction of wherever “dr. roy” is headed. The guy puts no thought whatsoever in what little original material he actually writes, he just parrots whatever the right-wing talking points of the day are. God forbid if he ever did a little research of his own beforehand!
How is Bill Moyers an “apologist” by the way? Because he didn’t harangue the guy with fabricated accusations of being a racist and a traitorous America-hater, or was it because he allowed Rev. Wright to speak in complete sentences without constantly interrupting him to call him names or shout him down when he attempted to respond? That seems to be the more normal course of events over at Fox and the other cable networks with people they’ve decided to demonize.
I had to agree with Bill Maher however that Wright did Obama no great favours by suggesting that when he distanced himself from Wright’s controversial remarks that he was “just being a politician”… I could imagine the almost palpable cringe coming from the Obama campaign when he unloaded that one.
RT - People like O'Reilly and Hannity (and their followers like dr. roy) view Moyers as an "apologist" for precisely the reason you suggest - namely that he doesn't berate, belittle and condemn Jeremiah Wright. It's a part and parcel of the whole right wing "with us or against us" mentality. It's blatantly dishonest journalism, but hey when you work for Fox News, dishonesty is the bare minimum requirement for employment.
And while I agree that Obama probably didn't like hearing the line about "just being a politician", there is an element of truth to what he said. (Similar in a sense to Obama's "bitter" comments, which were poorly received but right on the money). Obama did what any politician would have to do...gently distance himself from the soundbytes without denouncing Rev Wright as a person. No big surprise, really.
I watched Obama on FNS earlier today and was really impressed with the straightforward way he handled Chris Wallace’s questions. Then they had their panel afterwards… My head nearly exploded listening to Bill Kristol. I wanted to reach through the TV and throttle the life out of him. I’m hoping a clip comes along… He was just so unbelievably patronizing, smarmy and insufferably unctuous. It’s maddening just even thinking about it. He actually blamed Obama for not talking about serious issues! Well who the hell was conducting the interview and asking him all the familiar questions about Rev. Wright, not being “patriotic” enough because he may not have worn a flag pin, and so on? Incredible.
RT - I was going to blog about Kristol in the near future. I'm amazed that a guy like him continues to earn a paycheque. As a political observer, he has been absolutely and unequivocally WRONG about every single thing he has said in the past 5 years or so. And yet he continues to show up on these panel shows and expound on blatant lies and dishonest analysis of events both here and abroad. How does he do it? And why does he insist on doing it with that smarmy shit-eating grin on his face?? He is (literally) nothing if not infuriating.
Its sad to see other Democrats slinging these mudfortunate allegations at Obama.
Bill Kristol - didn't he get an at bat for the Yankees in spring training? Or is that the other guy with the same name who is also not as funny as he used to be....
Bowler - didn't he get an at bat for the Yankees in spring training? Or is that the other guy with the same name who is also not as funny as he used to be....
Heh. Unlike the former star of Soap, this Kristol is actually getting funnier with time and an increasingly impressive track record of being a completely clueless retard.
And to make matters worse, he has an editorial gig with the NY Times now.
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