WHEN WRIGHT IS WRONG

By: thebeerdoctor

May 1st, 2008

He wished it hadn’t turned out like this, but there is nothing to negotiate. Jeremiah, Barack is not going to have a sit down with you. You think of yourself as top capo in your Chicago church, but the young skipper has a much bigger crew. Business is business even when it is personal. Jeremiah Wright showed deep disrespect for Obama and his posse.

Maybe all the recent attention went to the 66 year olds’ head. At the National Press Club he clearly was having a good time, no matter who it might trouble. The visual antics during the questions time revealed a I don’t give a damn attitude that was remarkable for also being hilarious. Maybe I have been observing politics too long, but I couldn’t help wonder is there a hidden sponsor for this show?

The Louis Farrakhan question completely tore it. So the good Reverend thinks Farrakhan is one of the important voices of the 20th century. When the Nation of Islam capo speaks, black people listen? I do not know much, if anything, about religious organizations, but I have known jazz musicians from Chicago tell me that the Nation of Islam is a gangster organization, part and or parcel of the prison industrial complex. Their outreach programs help prisoners to lead moral lives free of drugs, but also free of an individual personality. Proof once again, that religion in most of its myriad forms, is actually up to no damn good.

Rev. Wright’s refusal to criticize the most honorable Louis Farrakhan has probably more to do with south side Chicago local politics, than anything else. As one former AACM percussionist told me: “Chicago is a gangster city.”

It was indeed a sad moment when Barack Obama had to call in his marker on his former pastor. He had no choice. The Aids-US Government conspiracy theory is not as crazy as the Illinois Senator thinks. But defense of Farrakhan? That’s a nut that can be certified by Planters. The Obama folks with all their media savvy, should have seen this coming. But they either refused to see the implications or suffered from misplaced loyalty on the part of their candidate. Whatever it was, it was indeed a spectacle to watch Barack Obama having all his hope boiled right out of him.

Barack Obama should have known that if his pastor is friends with Louis Farrakhan there would be trouble. The very same Louis Farrakhan who teaches us “Yacub’s History”. That all the racial problems started 6000 years ago, when a a mad genetic scientist created white people. Surely, Obama had lived in Chicago long enough to have heard these stories. Perhaps he thought it could all be glossed over… is that what community organizers do? John McCain can get a free ride when it comes to certifiable nut jobs such as John Hagee and Rod Parsley because as the media continues to reminds us, the Senator from Arizona is an American hero. Never mind that John Hagee claimed that hurricane Katrina was God’s way of showing his displeasure with homosexuality, or that Parsley wants a holy war (jihad?) against the false, evil religion known as Islam.

The point is, from my observations, politics and religion do not belong in the same house, let alone the same room. John Kennedy, for all of his faults, had one thing correct: religion at best, is a personal private matter, and has no business in statecraft. This was expedient on his part, in order to make clear that the President does not take marching orders from Rome. The same man who did not even use the word God, when addressing the nation on the Cuban missile crisis. What would he have thought of the junior Illinois Senator telling those in attendance at a rally, how he prays to Jesus every night? How far this nation has fallen from its secular strength.

How ironic that this religious belief that our politicians pander to has nothing to do with spirituality. Bush, McCain, Clinton, Obama all claim Jesus as their ally. Rev. Wright stated that the God that the slave owner prays to is not the same as the God the slaves pray to. This may be true, but one thing is true, for every blessed one of them: all are talking to an invisible being. Such irrational moments should be personal, and for God’s sake, private!

I am reminded of Peter O’Toole in The Ruling Class:

“You say that you are God?”

“Yes because every time I pray, I find I’m talking to myself.”