Bully Pulpit
By Harry T. Cook
This essayist is one liberal for whom the emergence of Barack Obama as a
serious
candidate for President of the United States has not exactly amounted
to the dawn
of a messianic age. The junior senator from Illinois seems still a
little green
in some areas, despite his brilliant educational credentials and his
multicultural
background. He is, however, eminently electable, and almost anyone would
be a welcome
change from George W. Bush.
The You-Tubing of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has
provided kindling
for those who would oppose any Democrat and who will do anything to keep
as much
of the neo-con, Republican status quo ante in place after noon on
January 20, 2009.
Indeed, the Rev. Dr. Wright uttered some pretty radical stuff from his
Chicago pulpit,
and if he weren't African American, his oratory would have been
dismissed as that
of just another crank.
Ever since the arm-waving reaction to Wright's post- 9/11"God damn
America" sermon
I have wondered why the Right and its hangers-on did not react in
precisely the
same way when the late Jerry Falwell and the still-living Pat Robertson
piously
opined that 9/11 was their deity's punishment of America for its
coddling of gays
and lesbians. What they were saying was that God had damned America. But
Falwell
was - and Robertson - is white. White preachers get to say a lot of
things with
impunity. But let a Jeremiah Wright let loose in his pulpit in high
dudgeon, and
let one of his parishioners be a man of color running for President, and
all bets
are off.
To some of my fellow bloggers and former newspaper columnist colleagues,
I say j'accuse.
Barack Obama is no more responsible for what Jeremiah Wright said in any
sermon
than any of my parishioners are responsible for what I have said in any
sermon.
There are members of my congregation - none, admittedly, running for
President -
who over the years have taken great exception to some of my homiletic
offerings.
They nonetheless remain congregants because they are open to having
their ideas
challenged and submitted to critical discussion - as am I.
Let us not forget the last years of the public career of Martin Luther
King Jr.
as he made bold to connect the moral corruption of America's treatment
of African
Americans with America's prosecution of the Vietnam war. King was
denounced even
by liberals who resented his sermonic incursion into foreign policy.
No, King never said "God damn America" from the pulpit, but if you
listened carefully
to what he said about the immorality inherent in the U.S. involvement in
Vietnam,
you could sense that he believed America was damning itself.
I remember that King and his sermon were called "un-American." The same
thing is
being said about the Reverend Wright. Echoes of the 1950s and its
notorious House
Un-American Activities Committee and of the late Senator Joe McCarthy.
Have we learned
nothing?
Meanwhile, my ministerial colleague, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president
of the
Detroit chapter of the NAACP and Heaster Wheeler, its director, have
given a not-yet-damned
America a splendid lesson in the First Amendment's guarantee of the
freedom of speech
- and, come to think of it, freedom of religion.
Preach it, Reverend Wright!
© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may
not be used
or reproduced without proper credit.
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
Blogs - http://rowlandsblogs.blogspot.com/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Funny Jokes and Pics - http://funnyjokesnpics.blogspot.com/
|
