Commonweal Magazine has a short piece by Don Wycliff, a relatively mainstream writer (teaches media criticism at Notre Dame), who sees Wright’s public comments as I do:
Whatever may have been Wright’s motives for speaking out now, he
stands to earn a dubious distinction in American history: the man who
torpedoed the presidential chances of the first African American with a
genuine chance of winning that office. That’s not exactly the sort of
thing you want your grandchildren to have to hear every Black History
Month.
But political impact aside, what was it about Wright’s National Press
Club appearance that got everybody so upset? From the beginning of the
Wright drama, when snippets of his sermons began showing up on TV, I
have thought that, with the exception of the dark suspicion that the
government ginned up the HIV virus to kill blacks, Wright’s principal
problem was that he was speaking what an old boss of mine used to call
“vicious truths”—things that are true but that the audience would
rather not hear. Read more.
Watch the Moyers interview
again, and then watch his other speeches. This man is not crazy. He is
not a buffoon. He might be outraged, but outrage, while impolitic, is
sanity in our current situation. This brouhaha is all about miseducated (Wright’s term) Americans’
discomfort with the ‘vicious truths’ that black Americans have an
historical perspective that enables them to see all too clearly. I
think Obama sees these truths, but he can’t speak about them because
that would automatically disqualify him from public office. Obama is
not a prophet; he’s a politician, which means he has to work in the
realm of the possible. And there are some things it is simply not
possible for a politician to say.
If Obama really believes Wright’s comments about Obama’s speaking as a
politician were meant to be a put down, I think he’s wrong. Wright was
simply recognizing that politicians speak to a different constituency
than ministers do. Obama has to worry about polls, and media, and
voters; Jeremiah Wright has an obligation before God to speak as he
best understands it the unvarnished truth. That’s the prophetic
calling. But Wright is realist enough to recognize that any politician
who speaks the unvarnished ‘vicious truth’ does not get elected.
Obama’s job is the much harder one; it takes more discipline. He’s
continuously threading the needle. All the rest of us, including
Wright, can speak freely without consequence. Obama, if he is to be
effective, has to be selectively truthful because to speak some truths
is to step on a landmine. There are some truths Obama simply cannot
speak, but that doesn’t mean that those who speak them are wrong; it’s
just that he cannot be associated with them and still be effective.
That’s the reality of the political calling.
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