I haven’t been following the Wright thing very closely, but last night I got curious enough to watch a few minutes of his recent press conference on youtube, and just now I skimmed through the transcript.
My impression is: That dude is awesome! What a performance! And he says lots of things very well. True, he’s a little nutty. The AIDS thing is almost a stupid as believing that Iraq was behind 9/11. But you can sort of see how spending a life watching the mainstream deny pretty obvious facts would make you suspicious of mainstream narratives. (I had a (white) relative of mine tell me something similar not that long ago. I was . . . dismissive.) If you want to be angry that someone is so suspicious of the government that he thinks that it might be behind AIDS, I suggest that you spare some of your anger for the government that warranted the suspicion (and boy, has it ever). But as for the rest, unless I’m missing something (and if I am, please tell me in the comments) I think the media is just blowing a fuse because he’s a black man who won’t eat their shit.
I applaud this strange, proud man who doesn’t want to eat shit.
Kegri | 01-May-08 at 2:31 am | Permalink
i love it! go jerry!
this whole mccain-obama-wright-clinton thing has the makings of first-rate tv! and no cylons!
Chris | 01-May-08 at 7:57 am | Permalink
Of course I do acknowledge that, as a fan of Obama’s, I sort of wish this would go away. But it would be something else if it wasn’t this. And then there’s the oddly compelling refusal to eat shit. There will always be good reasons why everyone needs to put their heads down and just keep eating shit, so perhaps it has to stop somewhere. Goodness knows this troubled country could use more of this attitude.
DC | 01-May-08 at 4:08 pm | Permalink
“I applaud this strange, proud man who doesn’t want to eat shit.”
I applaud this sentence!
However:
1) does Obama count as eating shit by shitting on Wright?
2)While I was impressed by Obama’s initial refusal to shit on Wright, didn’t Wright sort of shit on him this time?
Chris | 01-May-08 at 4:52 pm | Permalink
1. Perhaps a little bit. But I think he’s genuinely pissed, and isn’t just saying that because he has to. I don’t blame him. As far as I can tell he’s not *just* participating in an I-condemn-a-thon, and I too admired his refusal to do that right away. It makes his anger now seem a bit more credible too.
2. Yes. But I don’t blame him. Wright doesn’t feel like being harassed and slandered and he doesn’t feel like constant invitations to engage in I-condemn-a-thons by people too morally lazy to condemn in a genuine way the things that piss him off.
I read a line in the NYT today about “Wright’s racial radicalism.” If anyone reading can tell me, to what does this refer? What am I missing? Are people actually so racist that they can’t understand why a black man in America would be seriously pissed off? Are they? WTF? Are people insane or am I missing important information? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I admitted that I’m a bit out of it these days, so by all means jump in now and let me know the worst of it so I can get with the program and condemn the man like everyone else.
DC | 01-May-08 at 6:00 pm | Permalink
Yes that’s a bit odd alright. Perhaps the NYT lacks the vocabulary or imagination to refer to “theological radicalism” or “left-wing radicalism”. Certainly Wright doesn’t seem like his politics has much in common with Black nationalism (which might warrant the phrase “racial radicalism”. Glad to see from the transcript that he namechecked Malcolm though. He did steal his “chickens coming home to roost” line after all.)
So basically angry black man making radical criticism (plus slightly potty AIDS thing) = “racial radicalism” as though he were talking about “whitey”, is the line of thought.
By the by have you looked at his Wikipedia page? Check out the photo of Wright performing surgery on Lyndon Johnson! Pretty bizarre stuff. Zelig/Forrest Gump.
Chris | 01-May-08 at 6:21 pm | Permalink
Ha! I did skim the page today, but I didn’t actually notice that picture. Wow.
OneFatEnglishman | 03-May-08 at 10:59 am | Permalink
The AIDS thing is almost a stupid as believing that Iraq was behind 9/11.
This is also superb, in a quiet way..
DC | 03-May-08 at 6:55 pm | Permalink
Yes it struck me that that would be a really really great thing for Obama to have said in denouncing Wright. Might also call some attention to a certain, shall we say, disproportion involved in the fact that this all makes Wright persona non grata in a country whose president presides over a regime of torture, plus guilt (of non-crimes) by association seems to be more damning than actual guilt (of actual crimes.
Oh well!
Chris | 03-May-08 at 8:44 pm | Permalink
I’ve been mulling this over some more. A friend whose judgment I trust assures me that Farakhan, whom Wright declined to condemn, and about whom I really don’t know much, is a nasty fellow. So, if that’s right I would say that a sensible person should in most circumstances be willing, eager even, to say the appropriate things about the man.
But as nasty as Farakhan seems to be, I can’t blame Wright for declining to condemn him in this case. The political context in which Wright is invited to condemn Farakhan involves a) a deeply racist society; b) an audience not really all that concerned about that racism; c) a staggering indulgence of a whole variety of more subtle but still very real forms of racism on the part of the audience and the political culture at large; d) a strong desire to divide the black community and focus on differences within it; e) a strong desire on the part of a large number of people to humiliate people, especially black people, who refuse to toe the line on a lot of political issues.
So, in the circumstances, this seems one of those cases where telling the truth – that Farakhan is a nasty guy – also counts as eating shit. And he wasn’t going to do it. I wouldn’t have either. Not then and there.
I also saw a lot of complaining about how grotesquely egotistical Wright’s performance was. Well, I saw a man who obviously has a very high opinion of himself, but I couldn’t see much difference between him and most other prominent public figures on that score. And he at least was entertaining and lively. I think the word the commentariat was really looking for was “uppity.”
I have to confess that I’m a little surprised I didn’t annoy anyone with this post enough to leave a comment disagreeing with me.