Mr. Moss invoked the 40th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., saying Mr. Wright’s character was being “assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.”
...
“It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy,” Mr. Moss wrote, “to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite.”
He cited Mr. Wright’s development of ministries: “places for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with H.I.V./AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs, and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.”
All of this, of course, is a neat little "look over there" trick, designed to deflect criticism.
No one at all is criticizing Wright for his contributions to humanity. They are criticizing him for his anti-Semetic and overtly anti-American remarks. And his seeming anti-white bias has put a couple people off as well.
Let us not forget that it was a 15-30 second video, shot on a phone that brought down Michael Richards, screaming "You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He's a n*gger! He's a n*gger! He's a n*gger! A n*gger, look, there's a n*gger!" No one accused anyone of a hit job on Richards. No one said his remarks were taken out of context. No one demanded we look at how funny he was (or wasn't) on Seinfeld. His remarks were taken at their racist face value and denounced.
It is not character assassination to point out someone's own comments. It is not character assassination to show 3 and 4 and 5 minute clips of them talking. In one of these, the man even realizes that he has offended "some white people", and much like Richards, tells them to get over it. "He's preaching the Bible", don'tchaknow? As long as there is no mitigating context that we're missing, (and in Wright's case, there clearly isn't), playing his unaltered comments is nothing more than exposing people to his sermons. To compare him to the late great Dr. King is absolutely dispicible. Whereas King preached tolerance and told the black community to accept their white brothers and sisters (in an age where he was being sprayed with firehoses and attacked by dogs), Wright preaches about the evils of the white society to the black man (while he lives in luxury). The two couldn't be further apart.
Mr. Moss added that the questioning of Mr. Wright added up to “an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world.”
And of course the parting racist shot. If you are against anything we do, you are an unmitigated racist, who just hates the black man.
This further strains Obama's claim that he had no clue what Wright stood for. The very next minister defends Wright from these charges, echoing Barack Obama's very same tone. "We can't judge a 40 year career by a stupid thing said on occasion." The question is...why not? That's how we judge people in politics. How often is the assinine "Gays and single mothers helped cause 9/11" comment brought up, even now that the man is dead? It was a sad comment, and it rightfully tarred Falwell. The church simply wants a pass on Wright's disgusting and reprehensible comments because he's a black man, and black men, according to seperationist liberation theory, are supposed to stick together against white racist oppression (which this most certainly is...not honest criticism). Being black is the ultimate, get out of stupid free card.
While Trinity church would like to point to Reverand Wright's years of service to the black community as a way to define him...it's more appropriate to define him by his deep connections to virulent racist Louis Farrakhan, his support for suicide bombers in Palestine, his characterization of 9/11 as a way for "people of color to remind us they were still around", and his many trips to state sponsors of terrorism.
Playing the victim card just doesn't quite cut it here.
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