Is this a style controversy or a substance controversy? I see it as the first, but it's being played in the media as if it's the second.
I'm no expert in African-American Christianity, but I think that Wright is right when he says that this controversy is not primarily about Obama or him; it's about the Black Church. Of course it's about Obama, but it wouldn't be a controversy if the style and tradition of Black preaching was not perceived so negatively by the media and white Americans who are uncomfortable with its emotional and often hyperbolic style. Wright's sermons are being treated as if they were political speech, and they simply are not. It's religious speech. It's a prophetic style of speech in a Black idiom. I think that is the point Wright is trying to make when he says that he must speak as a minister of the Church and Obama must speak as a politician. I don't see that as a put down of Obama, but rather as simply an attempt to distinguish between the two types of speech.
So is Wright throwing Obama under the bus as Olbermann and his Obama-sympathetic crew seem to think? Is Wright an egomaniac envious of Obama's prominence and is now seeking to push his way back into the limelight that Obama's campaign pushed him out of? I don't see it--at least not in the clips being shown of his appearances in the last couple of days.
Is what Wright is saying the problem or that he has chosen not to crawl under a rock until after the election? What has he said that is so awful? I didn't hear it. If someone else did, tell me. So I could be wrong about all this, but I don't see it.
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UPDATE: Apparently political realities are coercing Obama to disassociate himself from Wright. Here's what he said, if you haven't read it yet:
The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.
They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I might not know him as well as I thought, either.
I think it has more to do with whom Wright is playing to. Dana Milbank sets the stage:
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."
Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."
I would defend my earlier comments that this is more about style than substance. But it's also clear that part of the substance of Wright's remarks is grounded in deeply felt anger. We can argue whether or not the anger is understandable or justified, but it's not arguable that Obama cannot allow himself to be associated with it. It destroys the whole premise of his campaign.