In his column today, George Will calls Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor of 20 years, “a gift determined to keep on giving.” Unfortunately for the rookie senator from Illinois, Wright’s rhetoric is actually helping Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for president. In “The Gift That Keeps on Giving“, George Will writes:
Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question arises: Can persons opposed to Barack Obama’s candidacy justly make use of Wright’s invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The answer is: Certainly, because Wright’s paranoias tell us something — exactly what remains to be explored — about his 20-year parishioner.
In Monday’s speech at the National Press Club, Wright repeated — decorously, by his standards, but clearly — his accusation, made the Sunday after 9/11, that America got what it deserved. His Monday answer to a question about that accusation was: “Whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap” and “you cannot do terrorism on other people and expect them never to come back on you.”
Will goes on to call Wright on his speech given to the NAACP on Sunday night:
On Monday, Wright also espoused the racialist doctrine that blacks have “different” learning styles than do others. This doctrine of racially different brains, or of an unalterably different black culture, is a doctrine today used to justify various soft bigotries of low expectations regarding blacks, and especially black children. It has a long pedigree as a rationalization for injustices. Slaveholders and, later, segregationists loved it.
It will be interesting what Obama chooses to do about this latest controversy surrounding the man that married him to his wife and who provided the title for one of the Senator’s books.
Michelle Malkin yesterday pointed out that Wright’s security is provided by the Nation of Islam. This only serves to strengthen the public impression that Wright is aligned with Luis Farrakhan bringing that anti-Semitic hate monger closer to Obama in the public’s perception.
PowerLine has a Wright article likening Wright’s relationship with Obama to Thomas Eagleton’s relationship with George McGovern. In the article, the following is written:
In his widely lauded Philadelphia speech, Barack Obama declared of Reverend Jeremiah Wright: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” It wasn’t quiite up to George McGovern’s expression of “1,000 percent” support for Thomas Eagleton as his running mate after revelations of his shock therapy, but it left Obama and Wright closely joined. Something about the revelation of Eagleton’s shock therapy made his ultimate dumping by McGovern inevitable. Something about Wright’s frank racism, among other things, now calls for some further response by Obama.
Unfortunately, for the rookie senator, it will be harder to disassociate himself from the pastor that he chose to take his family (including his young daughters) to hear “preach” — this recent media outburst by Wright keeps the public’s attention on the dubious choices that Obama made about his closest spiritual adviser.
[Update #1: 4/29/2008]
According to Politico, Obama has announced that he will be holding a “big press conference” to address his relationship with this divisive individual.
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