A Pilgrim’s Digression

It’s pretty astonishing how quickly things can change in this election year. Just yesterday I wrote that I did not see the reappearance of Reverend Wright as a major blow to the Obama campaign. His speeches did not seem to supply the anti-Obama crowd with much ammunition, and in fact by virtue of him appearing calm, his speeches seemed to defuse much of the anger over his past incendiary rhetoric.

Then, almost at the same time as I was writing yesterday, he gave a speech (harmless in itself) to the National Press Club, followed by a question/answer period in which he essentially confirmed his belief in all the ignorant things he has preached from his pulpit, and added a few more to boot.

Throwing any pretense of intellectual rigor to the winds, now according to Wright, any attack on him is an attack on “the black church.” Louis Farrakhan is “one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century.” And, in a glaring non sequitur, because the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Experiment from 1932 to 1970, therefore “our government is capable of doing anything” including purposefully injecting the HIV virus in American citizens.

I confess I feel ashamed of what I wrote about this man yesterday. If there was a case to be made that he was misunderstood, I think that case was irreparably broken at the National Press Club. No longer can we refer to his statements as “out of context” or refer to them having been said as many as six or seven years ago.

This man is single-handedly destroying the candidacy of Barack Obama. He is a living reflection of a political ideology based on racial resentment and ancient national sin that, in his mind, can never be expunged. He represents the kind of backwards-looking racial politics that has contributed to a multitude of black politicians being turned into a political sideshow–Marion Barry chief among them (Barry was at the National Press Club cheering on Wright, yesterday).

Obama needs to cut him loose. Now. Obama’s loyalty to Wright means nothing to the man. Wright goes before the media not once, but twice in about four days and says that Obama is merely a politician who “had to distance himself, because he’s a politician.”

Then yesterday, he threw Obama even further under the bus, stating: “And I said to Barack Obama, last year, “If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”

That’s how Jeremiah Wright has repaid Obama’s loyalty. Then, Wright walks out of the press conference with a Nation Of Islam security detail at his back.

If Senator Obama has good people beside him, managing his campaign, they must be telling him that the time is ripe to cast off Jeremiah Wright. He is no friend of Barack Obama. In fact, there is a part of me that suspicions Wright wants to see him fail because Obama’s failure will become yet another “symptom” of black victimhood in this country.

I am also beginning to think there is almost a death wish within the Obama campaign itself. Obama seems to feel that there is nothing he can do about Wright, but that isn’t true at all. Disown the man. Tell the American people that Wright has repaid the Senator’s loyalty with a stab in the back. People will respond to that. My god, I heard Bill O’Reilly actually waxing sympathetic towards Obama and his troubles last night. If O’Reilly feels some measure of sympathy for the man, how much more sympathy will the American people feel if Obama calls Wright out for his betrayal?

Frankly, it’s the only thing he can do to salvage his chances. I am not even sure he can win the nomination, now. I have a bad feeling about Indiana. I am not even sure that the supposedly monolithic black vote in North Carolina is that much of a sure thing. The media likes to portray the black community as 100% behind Barack Obama, but I think that is only true when he is viewed as a post-partisan unifier. Viewed as the weak-willed puppet of Jeremiah Wright…no, I don’t think that is a net positive in the eyes of most Americans, regardless of color.

Obama’s campaign is hemorrhaging. The only thing that can staunch the steady bleeding of support is to thoroughly, once and for all denounce Jeremiah Wright and all that he stands for. If Obama can’t do that, I hate to say it but he may not deserve to be our President. How can he expect us to believe he is strong enough to make even tougher decisions as President, when he cannot even bring himself to completely denounce an ignorant fool such as the Reverend Wright?

The scales have fallen from my eyes, anyway. I hope Senator Obama has an equally inspiring moment of enlightenment in regards to his “friend.”

NOTE: I have come to the conclusion that the post I wrote yesterday about Jeremiah Wright was so embarrassingly wrong in its evaluation of his character and his rhetoric, I cannot stomach even having it available for friends to read.  I am removing it from the site.