POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE BROOKS IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
George Hanshaw, your first comment is a set of very, very tired clichés.
First, the media never do their jobs, particularly in the United States. Anyone who thinks otherwise just doesn't know what he/she is talking about. The best papers in America beat the drum for going to Iraq, that utter bloody disaster, rather than doing one speck of serious investigation.
Second, the good publicity over Obama early on was precisely because he is a remarkable and attractive figure. He simply towers over the others running in both parties. Intelligent, educated, sympathetic, graceful, articulate - you name the fine characteristic, this man has it in spades.
Bringing in the Rev Wright is pure political sleaze. First, who wants to be judged by the views of another, one you may have spent an hour a week with in the mere formality of going to church? For most politicians in America, going to church is a mere formality.
There are so many ridiculous religious freaks out there with dashboard Jesus figures and superstitious nonsense filling their heads, no politician can afford not to be seen crossing a church threshold occasionally.
You don't seriously believe either of the Clintons is genuinely religious, do you? They are both consumingly ambitious and worldly, to say the least. Or that swearing, drinking, skirt-chasing man, McCain, who doesn't even sleep with his wealthy wife?
You condemn your own judgment in saying that is what should be done. Wright is an ego-maniac, but then so are all of the American televangelists and leaders of super-churches. You name the man - Falwell, Swaggert, Hinn, Roberts, Robertson, Graham, Bakker, Schuller - they are all ego-maniacs and about as genuinely Christian as Wall Street swindlers.
I also think, although I do not like the form it is presented in, that Wright does have some truths buried in his rhetoric. Crazy-sounding stuff like government manufacturing AIDS to attack blacks may be understood as parables and symbolic ways of talking about bitter underlying truths. God knows, America's blacks have truly suffered inordinate burdens and great injustice for more than two centuries.
Wright's more extreme expressions rank right up there with Falwell saying the Anti-Christ exists and that "he is in the form of a Jewish male." Or suggesting that the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered. Or blaming 9/11 on homosexuals. Or any of scores of other vicious, stupid words.
Moron Franklin Graham, right after 9/11, called for America's enemies to be attacked with nuclear weapons. When this exemplary Christian was younger, one of his favorite fun things to do, other than drinking and driving, was to use a machine gun on trees. His favorite gift to friends on birthdays or other occasions is an automatic pistol.
How about Pat Robertson publicly calling for the assassination of a foreign leader? He wasn't treated as a terrorist, as he very much should have been under America's ugly anti-terror laws.
The greatest underlying truth over the ego-maniac Wright is that America’s reaction to him is so extremely unbalanced.
