Rev. Wright does Obama a solid

(Thin gruel for the rest of us)

To start, I can’t believe I am even writing about this. Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ranks about 127th on my list of important issues this election season. Don’t get me wrong, some of the things Rev. Wright has said are worthy of discussion, but not so much in the way it “relates” to Obama (because it pretty much doesn’t).

God damn America? Now that was an interesting speech. Have you read the whole thing, or maybe heard more than a nine-second clip? Here’s the run-up to the “offending” phrase:

When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them [in] scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.

I don’t know about you, but I think that there is stuff in there to talk about—and I don’t mean just talk about it as it relates to Barack Obama’s white grandmother, either.

Sure there are other parts of that same sermon that flirt with what I would categorize as baseless, pointless conspiracy mongering (“The government lied about Pearl Harbor,” said Wright. “They knew the Japanese were going to attack,” to give one glaring example), but the point about damning rather than blessing America for all of the wrongs it has perpetrated against its African American citizenry—I can see talking about that. I might even go so far as to say that I agree with it. At the very least, that, to me, is good place to join the conversation about why a man like Jeremiah Wright inspires so many in his flock.

Which brings us to this week’s doings. Reverend Jeremiah Wright started his comeback tour with a rather subdued and sensible appearance on Bill Moyers last Friday (though even there, Wright snuck in a swipe at the “sin” of sodomy—a swipe that Moyers either missed or chose to ignore), but rounded out the long weekend with a performance at the National Press Club that included some rude put downs of the event’s female moderator and the allegation that the US government could have unleashed the AIDS virus on minority communities as a form of genocide.

I have a few thoughts:

First off, I think that Wright did Obama a big favor on Monday. Much to the chagrin of the Obama campaign and intelligent voters everywhere, the Wright-Obama “controversy” (no, please don’t let me get away with that—it is not a controversy—let’s just call it a “gab fest”) was not really going away. It was ebbing and flowing, but in the end, the people (and when I say “people,” I mean a handful of establishment media icons and members of the punditocracy) wanted blood. Even after Obama took it to kowtowed to Fox News this weekend, the screaming hordes would not be appeased. Why wouldn’t Obama engage in something more ratings-savvy than a 40-minute discussion of race? Why was he being so selfish? America demanded a smackdown!

And now, because Rev. Wright pushed the envelope, the “people” have what they wanted. Senator Obama has had to repudiate the angry black man. In the words of various media outlets, Obama has “cut the cord” and “made a clean break.” He has not only renounced the words, he has disavowed the man.

(Shall we wait to see if the establishment demands similar actions from John McCain vis-à-vis Rod Parsley and John Hagee?

I thought not.)

With his strong, un-nuanced, perhaps even angry renunciation of his former pastor, Obama has now been deemed “presidential.”

Secondly, what is up with all the old guys making a scene?

This political season seems like it has been dominated by post-middle-aged men trying desperately to cling to relevance: Jeremiah Wright. . . Bill Clinton. . . John McCain. All in denial about their best days being behind them, all still begging for attention, all refusing to get out of the way of progress (or whatever passes for progress these days). It’s all a little tawdry, a little hard to watch, a little embarrassing.

And, finally, rather than get all righteous about Wright’s “outrageous remarks” (to use Obama’s words), why not think a bit about why his words have resonance with a not insignificant portion of America’s populace. This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard the allegations about the government and the AIDS virus—and I doubt it’s the first time Obama has heard them, either. Surely the distinguished members of the establishment press have come across such stories. Why, years after the science of HIV has been integrated into our culture, does the myth of government-sponsored genocide waged against its own still have legs?

I have some ideas (the Tuskegee experiments, government foot-dragging during the early days of the pandemic, poverty, lack of access to affordable healthcare, lack of a modern science curriculum in our schools, to name several possibilities), but I don’t have the time to start dissecting them right now. Rather, I want to suggest that we at some point try. Instead of just writing off Wright, or continuing to act scandalized by his very existence, I think it would make for a better campaign and a better country if we could talk about why what Wright says affects us the way it does.

Of course, doing that in the context of a presidential campaign is probably asking much too much of a candidate or our current corporate media construct. The poor substitute of having Barack Obama simply and clearly distance himself from Rev. Wright will have to do for now. It is certainly preferable to the “all Wright, all the time” alternative.


Meanwhile, as we all focus like a laser on Jeremiah Wright, a second US carrier group has moved into the Persian Gulf, the recession that Bush refuses to acknowledge continues to deepen, the Iraqi occupation slogs along at over $341 million per day, suicide bombers kill in Kabul, Pakistanis struggle to restore an independent judiciary, a real genocide is happening in Sudan, our government continues to justify torture—the list goes on. Take a moment to compare how much time and space your favorite media outlet is giving to these stories. . . now compare that to today’s coverage of Obama’s remarks about Wright. . . .

Thought so.

God damn America.


*Please see my May 1 follow-up to this post.*


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

Let’s talk about sex. . . and race. . . and the race

Much has been and will continue to be made about the importance of race and sex in this year’s Democratic primary—about the importance of “identity politics.” Given the makeup of the Democratic field, I guess that such talk, on some level, was and still is inevitable. But at which level it is that this discussion takes place, well, to my mind, that doesn’t need to be as predetermined.

Here’s my overarching point: That a large majority of African Americans exhibit an affinity for candidate Barack Obama, or that a majority of White women exhibit an affinity for candidate Hillary Clinton, is not exactly the same thing as and does not justify the assumption that African Americans overwhelmingly voted for Obama because he is African American, or White women by-and-large voted for Clinton because she is a White woman.

Think about the never exactly asked but often alluded to question meant to gauge a prospective president’s “likeability”: Is this candidate the kind of person you would want to have a beer with? What I am trying to point out is that we all, to some extent, want candidates with which we share something—an experience, a proclivity, a history, a worldview. . . in short, an identity.

Do we usually advocate for someone exactly like us? I don’t think so. Do we assume that one common factor ensures that every other variable falls in line? Doubtful. Race and sex can be bound up with our aspirations and fears, but they are not the definitions of them. Rather, race and sex, in elections like in so many evaluative processes, are a kind of shorthand for a broad spectrum of factors—economics, education, outlook, etc. We search out candidates with whom we can identify on one or many of these levels, and we look for clues to help us make that evaluation—but that is not the same thing, to my mind, as practicing naked identity politics.

It is not an easy distinction (as I have just proven to myself over the previous three paragraphs), but that doesn’t mean it is a negligible one. It is, however, probably one far beyond the institutional interests of the establishment media.

For a broadcast journalism format, it has already taken me too long to explain this distinction. For the general interest press, it practically begs for an editor’s red pencil. The unfortunate demands of a profit-driven media catering to an audience that, to far too great an extent, is the product of an underfunded public education system does not work in the service of nuance. What was a kind of shorthand—a complex, multifaceted interaction—becomes simply an all-encompassing, zero-sum shorthand. The establishment media shorthands the shorthand—and as a result, we are all shortchanged.

The campaign and now the results from South Carolina will do little to improve this reductio ad absurdum that passes for campaign analysis. Alas, its afterglow—or collateral damage—will likely make things worse (at least in the short term—and who knows yet about the long term).

I have, to this point, been talking about race and sex (and if the establishment media were given to more sophisticated reporting, I would wish that they might, too), but it is race that seems to have seized the imaginations, such as they are, of most of the panting scribe class (Chris Matthews excepted, of course). The reasons for this owe in part, I figure, to America’s tragic history of openly violent racial oppression, and to the raw demographics of the population, but this part of the discussion is likely beyond my expertise, and beyond the scope of this post. For the moment, let me focus on what has increasingly been characterized as a nasty fight over race.

I don’t want to point fingers at any campaign—I think that fingers can be pointed, but not as clearly as many would think. I don’t want to say that there is plenty of blame to go around because that assumes, on the one hand, that there is plenty of blame, and, on the other, that it should somehow be distributed evenly—I’m not sure I feel secure in accepting either of those hands. I am not going to say it is all a wash, even if (and I am saying “if” because the polling data I’ve seen is not conclusive) the battle over race, such as it is, didn’t really push the voters in one direction or the other, because, at the end of the day, I do worry greatly about a fight that is characterized as revolving around what has been filed under to the charged rubric of “identity politics.”

But, for right now, at this point in the primary season, the worst thing about this tussle is that it gives the establishment media yet another story on which to focus at the expense of the issues.

Honestly, in the history of American identity politics, what has transpired this month is quite tepid (I'm not saying that I like or endorse these "strategies" to mobilize or divide voters—I don't—I'm just taking the long view). But, through the fisheye lens of the establishment media, suddenly it's human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! And it's practically all we hear about. Just watch the nightly news, the Sunday talkies, or supposedly erudite shows like Washington Week—for Republicans, they talk about how the economic downturn has affected the horserace, but for the Democrats, all I hear is "it's so nasty."

Where is Iraq? Where is national security? Where is healthcare, or education, or veterans' affairs? Where are the indignities done to our Constitution? The embrace of torture? The assault on privacy? Indeed, where is the failure of the entire GWOT ™?

And where is information on what the candidates will do to address these issues? Sure, the establishment doesn't like having to sell the meat, but it is the responsibility of the candidates to work overtime to keep the media from having access to easy sizzle.

The problems with the establishment media are manifold. There are national laws and individual reporters—all in dire need of reform. We should keep pressing for that reform, but it is a heavy lift, as they say. We won’t likely fix this one before we elect our next president.

So, this is a call to the candidates—all of them. If you truly do not want this race to be about race, don’t allow it to be. Don’t give the media anything that might play into their narrative. No allusions, no accusations, no counter-accusations. Actively contradict any reporter that poses a question framed by identity politics. Instruct all of your surrogates to do the same.

Steer all questions to talk about policy, to talk about proposals, to talk about the problem at hand and then suggest solutions. Be as specific as you dare. Be relentlessly on message. Give the press as little room as possible to reframe your campaign, or any part of your campaign, as an identity campaign.

Steer the conversation to President Bush. Talk about how united we all are in our disregard for him and our disgust with what his administration has done to our country. Mention Bush by name. Make the Republicans run with him or run from him. It’s a win-win.

Do not give in to the easy frame, no matter how advantageous it might seem at the moment. Come the summer, you will want to—have to—run a campaign that mobilizes voters of all stripes (and I’m not just talking about their external ones). Come next January, you will have to govern a country with numerous identities, many all mixed up in any given individual.

You will want to govern with a mandate. The more specific you can be about what you want to do and how you are going to do it, the more valid your claim to that mandate will be.

The Republicans will try to deny your mandate, chip away at it, characterize it as the agenda of special interests. The establishment media will no doubt play along because their operating principle is that people love a good fight, and every fight is as bloody and illicit as a cockfight, as bi-polar as a magnet, and as simple as. . . well, as simple as black and white.

That’s the way the media wants to see race—and that’s the way they want to see this race. If you want to win it—and I mean really win it—don’t give your opponents—and I mean your real opponents—a head start.

(cross-posted on Daily Kos)