THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Those scary quotes

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Mar.31-Apr. 5, 2008

Over the last few weeks comments by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright have been played over and over again on television. In the process Reverend Wright has been reduced to a caricature. Stripping his words out of context, twisting his life, work, and spiritual practice, the mainstream media turned an often eloquent voice for justice and compassion into a conspiracy theory spouting hate-monger.

This came as no surprise to Reverend Wright. The same thing happened to Malcolm X whose “chickens have come home to roost” comment on Kennedy’s assassination was echoed by Wright. It happened to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Farrakhan and to Jesse Jackson. The mixture of fear and anger directed at Reverend Wright’s critique of U.S. actions was predictable.

What was not predictable was the response from Barack Obama. In an eloquent and nuanced speech Senator Obama asked us to think and talk honestly about race. He refused to denounce and reject Reverend Wright, as he had done only days earlier with Farrakhan. While there were many limitations to the speech, for the first time in 40 years a politician spoke thoughtfully and from his own soul, about race, politics, and faith. He did so out of what he called “faith in the capacity of people” to respond to a sophisticated discussion.

“The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons,’ Senator Obama said, “is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made, as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know - what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

The speech left most commentators breathless. Even Mitt Romney’s jaded speech-writer said it was amazing to be addressed as an adult by an adult. Most could not talk about Obama’s ideas or find easy sound bites.

The people of Pennsylvania responded positively. A Franklin & Marshall College Poll taken in March 11-16, reported Clinton’s lead had reached 51% to Obama's 36%. According to a Gallup poll, Clinton started moving ahead when the Wright story broke. By the day of Obama’s speech she had a statistically significant 7 point lead. Then Obama spoke. Clinton's lead began to narrow, to 5 points and, by the end of the week to 2 points - statistically a tie.

But by the beginning of this week Obama’s speech has disappeared. Instead of hearing sections of it, we are getting new sound bites of Obama describing his grandmother as “a typical white woman.” Rev. Wright’s words have been reduced to the phrase “scary quotes.” Obama’s own thinking has been eradicated, conflated with the ideas of Farrakhan and the comments of Wright.

Obama is becoming the invisible man. His speech on Iraq and its relationship to the economy barely covered under the media effort to force the campaign into terms they understand. The intensity of the effort to bury Obama’s words is perhaps the greatest measure of their power. The old tricks of denial and distortion are losing their hold at a time when many of us know we have to talk seriously, maturely and critically about our country. We cannot be scared away from the conversation.

Email Shea Boggs Center,