So, I didn't want to immediately comment on Obama's renunciation of his pastor yesterday. In my initial post I expressed shock that folks were so incensed by Rev. Wright. That said, I want to be clear that I thought Wright acted a fool on Monday. There's a lot of chatter out there claiming that Wright was trying to sabotage Obama. I don't buy it. Like I said yesterday, I think Wright just wanted to say whatever he felt. But he made a few mistakes. Chief among them, as my friend Jelani Cobb has said, was not recognizing the difference between his pulpit and the lion's den. This press lives to expose these sort of performances, and Wright just gave them low-hanging fruit.
Why he would do that, given what he's been through the past few months, just boggles the mind. You can't, on the one hand, attack the press for distorting you, and then go right to the press to communicate who you are to the American people. The saddest part of this to me, is that I don't think Wright understood what was going on. There's a lot of reporting now suggesting that Bill Clinton's biggest problem is that he simply doesn't understand how much media has changed since his White House days. His gaffes are not the product of a decline in skills, as I've written before, but the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what the press has become--a gaggle of cynics who sit around waiting for people say something stupid. Gotcha journalism rules the day. Wright's mistake was much the same--he simply had no understanding of the press.
Frankly, I don't know how Barack Obama goes back to Trinity. The one thing he said that caught me in that press conference was that he goes to church to pray, not to be a distraction. How is that possible now? Any appearance by Obama there would immediately turn the church service into a charade.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I agreed with much more of Wright's “Different Is Not Deficient” Speech than I disagreed. Until his press conference, I suspect most of America did. I was pleased that so many people watched his amazing speech. Many of the most culturally incompetent (or most culturally imperialistic, or most xenophobic) among them probably heard those education, linguistics, and ethnomusicology arguments for the first time. I only hope most of the people who tuned-in managed to get a decent U.S. education before they did and figured how to at least try to think objectively before they did.
If Wright's comments will be the reasons Hillary runs on the Democratic ticket or will be the reason McCain wins a single state he wouldn't otherwise win during the general election then we'll have identified the key problems that plague our nation most, the average voting American's miseducation or the average voting American's dumbassedness. We'll know a little more about why poorer nations' children are besting ours in academic tests. We'll know a little more about why we don't value or reward superior academic achievement nearly as much as we should, even when selecting our presidents, who should have (1) superior judgment, (2) superior character, (3) superior wisdom, (4) superior knowledge, AND (5) superior intellectual ability.
And my number 1 political issue will no longer be promoting nationwide cultural competence, which I believe is the core prerequisite for a meritocratic nation. My number 1 issue won't be ending our Southwest Asia wars as quickly as we can, decreasing the unjust social affects and effects of U.S. poverty, providing quality health care to our poorest mothers and their children, or making and preserving quality white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs, or green-collar jobs in the U.S.
My number 1 issue will be significantly improving the quality of U.S. public education. Because if Wright's comments, and nothing else, will make our nation pick Hillary over Barack or McCain over Barack then that will signal to me that our public education system is criminally inadequate, churning out far too many robot-like zombies and far too few responsible citizens capable of thinking independently or well.
Rev. Wright is simply using his 15 minutes of fame to get a book deal. People say that Sen. Obama has thrown him under the bus...But I think Rev. Wright will get the last laugh!
By the way, have you read Heather Mac Donald's article on race and the criminal justice system in the Spring issue of City Journal? If so, what are your thoughts?
Biggest irony of all? The damage Rev. Wright did to his own reputation.
If his motivation to speak out was that his professional reputation had been slighted by a few looped sound bites... Jeremiah Wright is now, among most white commentators and some black ones, viewed as a "narcissist" and a loudmouth and a clown.
Wright did it to himself.