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obama
September 2008 
A few thoughts on Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Lindsey
I am a fan of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, maybe he is being an ass during Obama's campaign, which is obviously something I care a lot about, but then again Obama can now come out...Wright is wrong and I'm angered and saddened yada yada so maybe we can move on within the campaign, but it also saddens me that this is his stance.
Forgetting about Obama for a moment, Rev Wright isn't being particularly inflammatory, he is being a black pastor and sure the AIDs thing is weird, he may have been overbearing and ridiculous and enforcing this caricature of him. However, he is voicing a wound and a division in America that is completely ignored, and then when it comes up there is outrage. This is pretty sad, and reminds us that race and religion are huge areas of division and hatred in this country. How can we as a nation move on to issues of the environment, the economy, heath care, or simply improving the human race, if we ignore the anger of age old wounds and pretend that ignoring them will get rid of them. For a time this has been important, to allow the past to become so, but now it is time to let the past die for the sake of our children. We need to collectively acknowledge and allow the anger to pass through us and to stop picking at old scabs and actually let them heal. It is the leadership, the media, the intellectuals, the educated, the government and the schools that need to start creating change in this way. The country is basically saying sure, we are ready for a black president as long as he doesn't go to a black church or show a black identity, you must be fully “American” to be patriotic. Wrights view isn't fully true, the man comes across quite green, and I don't agree with him on many things, surely my perspective is vastly different, but his is immensely valuable at this time and place.
Coming back to Obama, I want him to win and I want him to embrace and acknowledge Rev Wright more than he has today. Obama went to his church for 20 years, and now he's saying this is a different man than the one I knew, this is silly, it is a contradiction. He is being forced, or perhaps in his own heart feels like abandoning this perspective and moving on and that this is the right thing to do, but if he doesn't win the nomination, and it is over this of all things, race relations in this country is going to move backwards or at least be uncovered as the painful state it may already be in. Which would be pretty tragic in my opinion.
Access: Public
I've been skimming dozens of stories and blog posts about this. Almost everyone says the same thing. This is so bad for Obama! Yada yada. Or isn't that Rev. Wright just a terrible man! I think the truth is, at least in this case, people feel angry because they want to feel angry. They feel offended because they want to feel offended. It makes them feel… so right! So sane! So firmly with the collective. Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives—they can all agree that Wright is a divisive, inflammatory figure. Fair enough. Whatever. Obama's situation is different. It's personal, and spiritual. I think the first two Wright appearances were wonderful, but that last one had something deeper going on between the two of them. And I think Wright went too far. Too much ego got involved. Oh well. But you know I agree on your points. What gets me is just how all this madness is generated and self-perpetuates. Here's a great post I found that gives some biographical context: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/04/29/why-d-obama-join-trinity-in-the-first-place.aspx?CommentPosted=true
I agree with you, I didn’t see most of the speech just read the transcripts so I missed a lot of the display which sounded pretty egoic and immature. That was an interesting article though. I am so curious as to their relationship, especially since the campaign. This is kinda of interesting too, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/columnists/louis/index.html .