Preach, Brother

Just in case you still have not heeded my calls for you to watch Bill Moyers, please read on.

Excerpt of Bill's opening on 5/2 (full text here)

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he nows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this -this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner -before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".

My emphasis, of course; but if you watch it, you will see what Bill was emphasizing and that I am not really exaggerating.

I know that Obama supporters are righteously angry about Reverend Wright's timing and desire to defend himself winning over Obama supporting. I understand. But, this man does not deserve to be reviled. And, in the long run, it will be a benefit to Obama for Wright to have made available the opportunity to be disavowed righteously. It's up to us to be the moral compass, here; stand up to the news media. Demand that they deal with ISSUES and not DRAMA.

And, by the way, I am not a believer, but I would go to Rev. Wright's church. He hasn't said anything that has offended me.

And, Bill, as always, YOU ROCK!