This week in politics – The (W)right Reverend Edition

Yes, I know I was going to post dueling book reviews this week, but again, something more worthy of commentary has come up.

At first I had not thought I would have anything to say about the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Mostly because organized religion is not a part of my life so I would be viewing it with that personal filter meaning – no big deal to me. I just don’t get the uproar. Plus, when I look at the people in my life for whom religion IS a large part (my parents and many friends), I see that it is the basic religion and church *community* that is important. Not any one minister or pastor. Now, I understand that at Obama’s church the head pastor and founder of that particular branch will naturally be a huge influence. Still, this is not brain washing. It’s a Sunday sermon. I am sure everyone who regularly attends church has heard things that they don’t agree with and would never attempt to absorb in their lives. Taking a moment to go to Obama’s book Dreams of My Father where his first first encounter with Reverend Wright is detailed, it makes perfect sense to me why these two connected at that time. Obama inherited from his mother a desire to spend his life in community service, as she had. While his early adulthood was largely centered on the struggle to find his identity and understand his father, he never strayed from that community service commitment. He walked away from the beginnings of a corporate career after completing his undergraduate degree and accepted a position as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. It was there that he met Wright. Now, having watched Bill Moyer’s interview with Wright, I saw the Reverend talk about how he had always wanted his church to be about so much more than just the Sunday sermon. He asked the congregation to be of service to each other 7 days a week, not just on Sundays. IMHO, it was this goal which attracted Obama as he was trying to work with various church congregations to set up community centers to address the needs of the south side residents and he had been initially disillusioned by some churches that seemed to only care about people 1 day a week.

So now that I have rambled, what is my point? I think it is that I never thought for a second that Obama believed everything that Wright believed. Just as I don’t think my devoted friends or my parents believe everything their ministers believe. We are, as the very wise Jon Stewart said this week, “very complex Americans”. All of us. The candidates, their ministers, the voters, all of us. To reduce any of us to sound bites or worse, to sound bites of our pastors is terribly short sighted and just another by product of the declining quality of the media and this era of attack and destroy politics.

On to another point that has bugged me through all this – a whiff of hypocrisy and/or double standard by the media. The sentiments conveyed by the selected Wright sound bites (and the lovely things he added to the pool of videos this week. Ugh. Mr Ego exposed eh?) were opinions I disagree with 100%. However. No wait, this needs to be a BIG HOWEVER, ok? HOWEVER, if the media also thought those opinions were reprehensible, can someone please explain to me why Pat Robertson is a Fox New correspondent? Isn’t continuing to put him on the air on a major news outlet a tacit stamp of approval on him? This man who recently advocated the assignation of another country’s leader? Shoot – click on that link and imagine if there was an endless video loop of all of Robertson’s controversial statements. Fox knows about all of them and yet pays him to appear on their shows!! Seems to me he is saying things equally as appalling if not worse than Rev Wright’s. But he is given credibility by a major news network. How can that same network criticize Wright? However #2: Pastor John Hagee. The minister who John McCain sought out for an endorsement. A pastor who’s anti-Catholic bigotry equals anything you want to attribute to Rev Wright. Other than this column in the NY Times this week, we hear very little about the controversial statements Rev Hagee has made, nor is there any outcry aimed at McCain to now reject this endorsement or to denounce his statements. Yes, I realize that these two examples are not *exact* comparisons to the Obama/Wright issue and they are not meant to be. I think they illustrate how the media/public has a double standard towards these ministers. Robertson is given legitimacy by a news outlet. Hagee’s statements are ignored and he is embraced by the GOP candidate. Obama and Wright have been raked over the coals and analyzed to the nth degree. The NY Times article points to racism as an explanation. Is it? Well, as a white woman I never go down that path as I feel I have no right to speak of it. But, if not racism, then what? If not racism, then which news outlet will be hiring the obviously not camera shy Rev Wright to be a correspondent for them? Just wondering.