August 12, 2008

UPDATED: You heard it here first

From New York magazine (via NRO):

In October, Obama’s former pastor, Wright, will publish a new book and hit the road to promote it, an occasion that might well place the topic of Obama’s blackness (along with his patriotism and his candor about what he heard in the pews in all those years at Trinity Church) squarely at the center of the national debate. How Obama handles that moment may determine whether he becomes the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As I blogged here on April 2:

So, I don't expect we've heard the last from Rev. Wright. All summer, he's going to be sitting in his new mansion on the golf course in the gated community in 93% white suburban Tinley Park brooding on how Obama has betrayed him, and what he's going to do about it.

He'll think of something.

For example, last November 2, he invented the Jeremiah Wright Trumpeter Lifetime Achievement Award and gave it to Louis Farrakhan at a big bash at the Chicago Hyatt Regency, but it took the white media ten weeks to even notice what a black man had done. This year, there are all sorts of people he could give his award to on, say, Saturday night November 1st. And I bet this year it won't take ten weeks before the white press talks about it!

Or maybe somebody else will think of something for Wright to do. If you were a literary agent, say, wouldn't you want to sign Wright up for a quickie bestseller, with a release date targeted at, say, 10/1/08? Hustle your best ghostwriter out to Tinley Park and get Wright's memoirs and views on current issues slapped together by the Fourth of July. Make that deadline and you could have it on the bookshelves five weeks before Election Day!

No, I don't think we've heard the last from Rev. Wright.

Update: Now, Rev. Dr. Wright's daughter says that isn't true. She asserts her father is in an electronically inaccessible region of Ghana and will issue a statement when emerges from "email hell."

I must say, the news Rev. Wright is currently hanging out with Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Kurtz makes Obama look much more Presidential than did the endless Obama-Wright psychodrama of last spring. As I blogged on April 29:

One little-mentioned aspect of Barack Obama's on-going fiasco involving his spiritual mentor is that it makes him look feckless.

Rev. Wright has been a problem Obama knew he was going to have for, roughly, ever. But what has he done about it, besides giving a 5,000 word speech? Did he switch to a Washington D.C. church when he was elected to the Senate in 2005? Did he persuade Trinity to stop selling Wright's sermons on DVD? Did he provide any sort of narrative about the evolving ideological differences between the young and mature Barack Obamas?

In contrast, do you remember how in February 2004, Democratic frontrunner John Kerry was rocked by rumors that he was having an adulterous affair with a young woman? You probably don't remember because, although for about a day it looked like it might derail Kerry's victory march through the primaries, the story quickly went away -- when the young lady went away, leaving the country.

Problem dealt with.

I have no idea if the rumors about Kerry were true or if the girl's timely departure from America was a coincidence or what. But, let's assume the worst about Kerry: he wrote a big check from the allowance his wife gives him to his mistress in return for making herself scarce. What can you then say about Kerry?

Well, one thing you can say is that he had a problem and he dealt with it. All else being equal, I'd rather have a President who had a problem and dealt with it than a President who had a problem and failed to deal with it.

Wright should not have been an unsolvable problem for Obama. Wright likes the spotlight, but he also likes other things. (He drives a Porsche, for example).

So, Wright likes money. Obama has friends with money. Right there, you have the makings of a deal. (The payoff didn't have to be crass -- just that in return for Wright maintaining a low profile all year, in December 2008 Obama's supporters would start up a charitable foundation for Rev. to run. Obama could have asked Bill and Hill for advice on the fine points of foundations.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice call, Steve. You seem to understand his mentality quite well.

Anonymous said...

Bullseye.

He can still do the award thing, so you may have two in one.

Anonymous said...

Damn, you're good. The Clinton campaign should have surreptitiously retained you for campaign strategy.

m said...

actually Steve, I thought this before you wrote it

Anonymous said...

Hahahahaha! Steve Sailer...you really are the greatest pundit alive. The only one who consistently makes novel and interesting predictions that *come true*. The contrast to Sullivan and Atrios and Yglesias and Podhoretz could not be more striking.

This is because you have a source of truth, the Maxim gun of h-bd, that the others do not.

Brilliant work.

Anonymous said...

"This is because you have a source of truth, the Maxim gun of h-bd, that the others do not."

Not to sell h-bd short but Steve gets it right more often because he is willing to observe reality without ideological filters and report without regard to conventional wisdom. His source for truth is caring about truth. I know it's circular logic, the thing is though, if you don't value truth you will never seek it.

ben g said...

As an Obama supporter, this had me worried. Did some googling thought, and, according to CNN.com and Essence magazine, it isn't true:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/12/daughter-rev-wright-not-publishing-book-in-october/
http://essence.typepad.com/news/2008/08/daughter-rev-wr.html

Anonymous said...

ben g's link leads to a funky little story in which Anderson Cooper claims Jeri Wright claims her dad (currently in Ghana's "email hell") chuckled on the phone that no such book is forthcoming.

Curiously, in the comments section of the New York Mag piece, somebody called "attyforpositivechange" says:

"Rev. Wright has advised me that he is not coming out with a book about Obama. You have stated a vicious lie, which is clear defamation!"

If Coop ain't an attorney, and the commenter isn't lying, is the commenter Jeri? This Jeri?

(Since Jeri is interested in liberating people, how about freeing us all from the misery of ubiquitous head-splitting "hip-hop beats" polluting our formerly liveable civilization, eh?)

Thank you, Jeri, but I'll wait for the rev. to deny the story himself by telephoning a news outlet or even Coop.

Anonymous said...

If, in the final days of the campaign, we have dueling talking heads between Rev. Wright and Obama, then not only might this suck all the air out of the McCain campaign, but, I predict, Obama will come out on top. Wright is a perfect foil for his imaginative centrism -- which, by the way, is something you cannot fake.

Full disclosure: my batting average in presidential prognostications is zero.

Anonymous said...

"electronically inaccessible region of Ghana"

From what I've seen of Africa whilst traveling through there on my motorbike, that woud be all of Ghana except for the Hilton. WTF the place is at least good enough to source all our world leaders from, beginning with Kofi Annan, now Obama, maybe the next pope?

michael farris said...

Now, if Obama and Wright are really, really on the outs and Wright wants to sabotage the campaign I could believe this. But, I'm really not so sure they are.

I was travelling and away from computers when the second Wright shoe dropped and Obama supposedly broke with him. This means all I saw were snippets played in heavy rotation on CNN international.
In the CNN snippets, I didn't hear Obama make a definitive break. I heard him make a lot of open ended sentences along the lines of "what more can I say?" (not an exact quote) that everyone was interpreting as a break. On the basis of that I assumed that the whole thing was a put on, another "I have understood you" moment. After getting getting back on line I didn't follow up (partly lack of interest, partly the busiest time of my work year was coming up).

My take: The "Obama might have to distance himself from me" remarks were out there and Obama's "throw grandma under the bus" speech hadn't repaired the original damage. So Wright shows his ass in public enough that Obama can make an angry sounding so that people will believe he's cutting Wright off and (crucially) does so in a way that doesn't alienate black voters (note Obama's references to Wright's 'disrespect', a culturally appropriate reason for anger).
My prediction is that after the election, there will be a 'reconciliation' followed by more preachy condescension on Obama's part towards critics.

While I'm here. I'm interested in the typical white grandmother. What struck me in his speech was that he talked about how much his typical white grandmother loves him, but doesn't ever mention how much he loves her (which would have softened people's distaste somewhat). A small detail, but ...

Finally, I note that when he recently visited said typical white grandmother, he did so on his own without wife and kids. I guess that's just being considerate; what old woman living by herself would want to see her great grandchildren? My guess here is bad blood between the missus and the typical white grandmother.

Anonymous said...

What struck me in his speech was that he talked about how much his typical white grandmother loves him, but doesn't ever mention how much he loves her ... Finally, I note that when he recently visited said typical white grandmother, he did so on his own without wife and kids. I guess that's just being considerate; what old woman living by herself would want to see her great grandchildren?

This is what draws me back from my prediction that an Obama administration will be so laughably incompetent, no harm will result. Observations like this make me think an Obama administration will be militantly, aggressively, and effectively anti-white.

And it just occurred to me, this is what may drive whites to ally with Hispanics as a matter of mutual protection of group interests. I think this is Fred Reed's take on the situation.

--Senor Doug

Unknown said...

According to this website, the book is not happening.

http://essence.typepad.com/news/2008/08/daughter-rev-wr.html

Anonymous said...

Yeah, The New Yorker made it up out of whole cloth - purest whimsey! No one at the New Yorker is acquainted with anyone in the New York publishing world; there are no rumors; no one is even thinking of a book. Book? What book? Never heard of it.

How does one telephone one's daughter from an "electronically inaccessible" region? Well, white Jesus could change water into wine...