Herbert: Jeremiah Wright is the punditocracy's porn addiction

[BeyondGeography]

Pastorbation creeps ever closer into the lexicon:

Overkill and Short Shrift

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again.

We’ve plotted the trend lines of his relationship with Barack Obama over the past two decades. What did Obama know and when did he know it? We’ve forced Barack and Michelle Obama, two decent, hard-working, law-abiding, family-oriented Americans, to sit for humiliating television interviews, reminiscent of Bill and Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes” at the height of the Gennifer Flowers scandal.

We’ve allowed the entire political process in what is perhaps the most important election in the U.S. since World War II to become thoroughly warped by the histrionics of a loony preacher from the South Side of Chicago.

There’s something wrong with us.

Race is like pornography in the United States — the dirty stories and dirty pictures that everyone professes to hate but no one can resist. But I suspect that even porn addicts get their fill sometimes.

The challenge for the working press right now is to see if we can force ourselves past the overwhelming temptations of Wright and race and focus in a sustained way on some other important matters, like the cratering economy, metastasizing energy costs, the dismal state of public education, the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or the damage being done to the American soul by the endless war in Iraq.

...Are we in the news media going to be serious about this election, or is it really going to be all about Wright and race all the time?

Most of the electorate understands that the U.S. is in sorry shape, which is why more than 80 percent of poll respondents say we’re on the wrong track. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has nothing to do with any of that. The idea that his nonsense may shape the outcome of this election is both tragic and absurd.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/opinion/03herbert.html?ref=opinion

[rainy]

1. Charles K.'s Obama/Wright hit piece appeared in my paper today.

I want to write a letter to the editor stating that no one has actually looked at the words of Wright and investigated them or asked the simple question; what part of what he said is not true? Help me wright my letter. I'm sick of every pundit fool going on and on about the 20 years without even looking at what Wright said.

[RC]

3. People don't want to acknowledge what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was saying

is far closer to the truth than what is in our so called news. Far closer than what our own government is telling us. Instead of vilifying him, challenge the vilifier's to prove what they say.


"God Damn America"

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Put me on the record for agreeing with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright on the above quote, and I and not a believer. By what right do we have to be doing what we have been doing for the last 250+ years? We are the bad guys.
What we did to the Aboriginals that were here for thousands of years before us was just for practice. God approved, don'tcha know?

How did France, Spain, etc., come to have the deed to so much of the land here? Simple, some white guys travailed across parts of this continent and took notes of what they saw. That's it!
Some of the white guy CEO's and their darker skinned wannabes are still going onto other Aboriginals lands and stealing the resources and driving the real owners off, only now we are calling it capitalism, or fighting terrorism.

America is the rogue terrorist country. We're it! We arm, train and support terrorism and have since our inception. School of the America's/Blackwater. The Military-Industrial Complex. They are keeping our economy from collapsing.

We really need to start listening to what the Jeremiah Wrights are saying.

Let's hope the Karma we are facing isn't the end of us.

[rainy]

4. Thanks for your comments. I agree and I really want to write a thoughtful

letter to our editors for printing Charles K.'s hit piece.

[npincus]

2. hoping for a Backlash to this biased, Natalee Holloway-like treatment.