Wright Here, Wright Now

2008-04-29
By Monroe Anderson

After being caricatured into a racist, hate-filled, anti-American nut job, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is emerging from his self-imposed public exile.

Barack Obama’s former pastor appeared on Bill Moyer’s Journal on Friday, was the keynote speaker at the Detroit Branch NAACP's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday and was the keynote speaker at the National Press Club in D.C. on Monday.

Great. In this 24/7 news cycle world, we need all Wright all the time.

I know this is counterintuitive, but I think it will serve the Democratic Party’s presidential frontrunner well if we see more Wright—much, much more Wright. 

The conventional wisdom is that Wright’s return to the national scene is not doing Obama any favors. You hear that the Protestant pastor should have remained MIA until shortly before Thanksgiving—if not for eternity. You read that any time Wright speaks he only serves to stoke the passions of righteous Americans who have taken to heart the hard knock words they’ve heard out of context. You know that the running rap has Rev. Wright as a big-time blight hampering the Obama campaign from closing the deal.

I say it ain’t necessarily so. 

Since the manufactured controversy erupted last month, Wright gives certain American voters, as Chris Matthews describes it, a “permission slip” to not vote for Obama. The former Trinity United Church of Christ pastor gives them cover to continue voting whites only.

Wright, however, doesn’t have to remain the blunt instrument the rightwing clinches to beat Obama down from here to November. With the exception of the conservative whites that aren’t going to vote for what could be America’s first black president for any reason at any time, a Wright P.R. blitz can shrink the mountain back to a molehill. 

Let’s begin with the obvious: Rev. Wright disappeared after misleading snippets began endlessly looping because a fair amount of his life’s work has been dedicated to social justice. Witnessing the very real possibility that this great nation may finally break its bad habit of electing one white man after the next to its highest office has to be as exhilarating to him as it is to me and millions of other Americans.

But then, the situation got way out of hand. Rev. Wright’s four-decade legacy went to hell.  He had to flesh out the cartoon villain the viral videos have transformed him into. He needed to explain and defend his church’s black liberation theology, which has been so unfairly misrepresented. He’ll have to do it some more and then some more again.

“I’m distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiastical experience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching,” Rev. John Buchanan, who is white, told his own congregation last month.

I found no evidence that Rev. Buchanan is related to that other Buchanan, Pat, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans and rightwing agent provocateur who plays a political analyst on TV.  John Buchanan is the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. His Gothic-architecture church was the setting where Carmen Diaz got married in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” In real-life, Fourth’s flock is just like in the movie. Its congregation is largely white and rich and powerful.

“Senator Obama’s critics wonder how the senator could have remained in Wright’s congregation and under his leadership for twenty years,” Rev. Buchanan said in his week-after-Easter sermon. “The answer is that Wright didn’t say ‘God damn America’ every Sunday. In fact, Wright’s sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright’s are near the top of the list.”

Of course, you’d never imagine that by watching Fox Cable News or from any of the other ongoing outlets for the rightwing propaganda machine. Last week, the North Carolina Republican Party unveiled an ad using Rev. Wright to attack Obama as “too extreme.”

Without question, that’s just an early cheap shot the rightwing is preparing to sling. The Republicans believe Wright will be their WMD. And that’s why he should saturate the media with his intelligence, conviction and reason. He should religiously make the media rounds from “Meet the Press” to “This Week” to “20/20” to “Countdown” to “The O’Reilly Factor” to “The Colbert Report” to “Nightline” to “Saturday Night Live.” He should go on "Oprah," "Ellen" and "The View," too.

Should he make those rounds, before long, the fickle American media with its attention-deficit audience will decide that what was once “shocking and stunning” is really basic and boring. Old news is no news.

And for Wright, Obama and the nation at large, no news will be good news.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com