Friday's Feeding Frenzy

Gee, I missed it. I didn't have time to see any TV Friday, and missed the whole feeding frenzy over the suddenly publicized remarks of Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., when he was the pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. I did read Obama's HuffPost post on it, in which he denounces the remarks being cited, and later that Wright has been dropped from any relationship to his campaign.

I don't know what excerpts were on TV but the one posted here, which I listened to, seemed a response very early in the campaign to the supposed charge within the black community that Obama was not "black enough." While Wright's rhetoric might seem excessive and even offensive in some contexts, there's nothing in it, frankly, that isn't true. Or let's say closer to the truth than most Hillary speeches. And according to Hillary standards, it's not an ad hominem attack anyway, but a historical reference. In any case, it's a good window into how significant elements of the black community see things from their perspective. Always instructive to white people, who think their perspective is not only the right one, but the only one.

Judging from some posts here and there, Wright made some other biased or otherwise crazy statements, putting him closer to the league of those preachers backing McCain. The fact that Wright may be getting all the heat instead of them probably makes one of Wright's points: it's different if you're black. You're still the Other.