Question: How many speakers at the Republican convention last week mentioned Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.?
I did text searches on the speeches by McCain, Palin, Giuliani, Lieberman, Romney, and Steele (the main black speaker) and didn't find any mentions of "Wright," "pastor," "minister," "church," or "Trinity."
As a commenter suggested, you might think that keynote speaker Rudy Giuliani could have had some fun with Wright's comment, as reported by Newsday last March:
From the Wright-written eulogy for scholar Asa Hilliard in the Dec. 2007 edition of the Trumpet magazine [published by Wright's daughter]: "(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him... The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans."
After calling Jesus's crucifixion "a public lynching Italian style" executed in "Apartheid Rome," he goes on to claim that white supremacists run the U.S. government:
"The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge ..."
Senator Obama gave $53,000 to Rev. Wright's church in 2005-2007.
But, no, all is forgiven and forgotten, apparently ...
The only mention in the press of this curious absence of Rev. Wright's name from the GOP convention I could find was a Madison, WI religion columnist who noted:
"I was fascinated during the Republican convention this past week that for all the attacks on Obama, the furor from last spring over Jeremiah Wright seemed to have been taken off the table. I imagine that was done in part because of the racial subtext of that furor ..."
And exactly how much credit are the Republicans getting for their forebearance in not going after the juiciest target? Zero. They are being denounced for making a joke about community organizers!
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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21 comments:
It's even more telling that they didn't mention the word "church."
I've never understood why McCain backers haven't put more effort into spreading the 'White Italians killed Black Jesus' comments around. This is far, far worse than anything he could say about America in my opinion, and I'm not even Italian! The sociological, and/or 'out of context' excuses don't work nearly as well.
I also noticed the total blackout of Rev. Wrigh. Without any doubt this was centrally coordinated, clearly some Republicans lets to themselves would touch on the issues.
Maybe it’s the correct strategy; McCain knows the media would paint him a racist and want to win “clean”.
One interpretation is that plan A is to win as a positive not-Bush Maverick/Palin reform ticket.
Plan B would be to win by pointing out Obama is a radical pretending to be a centrist. As long as plan A is working no more crazy minister.
The absurdity is that the left and the media is not giving McCain any slack: he could legitimately drag their guy to the ground, win or no win (if Obama wins after a dirty campaign his presidency will be like Bush, with half the people hating him to start with, and many more ready to start hating him after a few slips). McCain choices to play nice, but they have no problem going after Palins children.
The Madison columnist had it exactly right.
During the Inquisition people were terrified of being accused of consorting with the Devil. During the late seventeenth century women were terrified of being accused of witchcraft. Throughout the Middle Ages central Europeans were terrified of being accused of being werewolves. Today....
One possible explanation is that there are a lot of Americans who attend religious services lead by wackos and that the GOP didn't want to offend anybody.
Remember that Wright isn't a member of a minor streetcorner denomination-he is part of the 'mainstream' Protestant United Church of Christ-what used to be called congregationalists.
I have no doubt that other United Church of Christ ministers preach much the same thing, possibly not with the same gusto.
It would indeed be racist to criticise Wright and not his White colleagues.
A conspicuous absence indeed. You know what's another conspicuous absence, the lack of any reflection on the intellect of one of the least educated VP nominees in recent memory, here on a site notorious for decrying the lack of robust standards for our political leaders.
Steve that's a joke right? If Rudy mentioned the "garlic nose" comment the msm would have gone apeshit.... Olbermann would have openly weeped...Sullivan would have doubled up on the testosterone...Bill Maher would have been even more smug and unfunny...oh and McCain would get about 55% of the popular vote.
At that convention they made a lot out of McCain having been tortured in Vietnam. The interesting thing about this torture is that McCain broke under it. He signed the statement that the Vietnamese wanted him to sign. Of course I would have cracked too in that situation. Most people would have. But unlike him I'M NOT CALLING MYSELF A HERO. OK, he doesn't use the word "hero" himself, but people on his payroll do. All the time.
Cracking under torture was the most unremarkable, unheroic, predictable thing that could have happened to him after he was captured. How did that turn him into a hero? What about the guys who didn't sign any statements? If McCain is a hero, then who are they?
And yes, the fact that they never mentioned Rev. Wright is even worse. An honest treatment of the Rev. Wright issue (like, for example, showing a few video clips of his sermons) would have won them the election. And yet they didn't do it. They've put PC not just above truth (we're all used to that), but above WINNING!
It may also be that the Republicans suspect it won't be a workable point to attack him on, for one of several plausible reasons:
a. Maybe they're worried about what quotes will emerge from some prominent (mostly tepid) McCain supporters on the religious right.
b. Maybe they figure emphasizing his connection with a controversial Christian minister will undermine the whole "Barrack Obama is a secret Muslim" bit.
c. Maybe they don't think they can get a lot more mileage out of the Wright quotes.
d. Maybe (I kind of suspect this is true, but don't know if it figured into their decision) attacking Obama on the whole Wright thing makes a lot of their Christian base uncomfortable. I've sat through some homilies that I completely disagreed with, but stuck with my church. I think almost any seriously religious person is likely to be in the same boat--you don't leave your church or parish or whatever lightly.
Given Obama's obvious, enormous political ambitions, the fact he didn't ditch Wright earlier makes me suspect he really did feel a connection with his church, whether in the sense of belonging to a community, or the sense of feeling close to God, or some combination of the two.
I don't know how to weigh these, I'm just suggesting that there are a lot of reasons other that political correctness why the Republicans at the convention weren't bringing up Wright. (And the convention was apparently very tightly controlled, including black-hatted bouncers with the authority to throw delegates out if they got off message. Hell of a way to run a party, if you ask me, but it's not my party, so my opinion counts for nothing.)
Book?!?! How exciting! Look forward very much to reading it! :-D
A perhaps safer target would have been Father "I'm Entitled!" Pfleger. It's frightening that not only is attacking a black person like Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright off limits, but attacking the Uncle Tims is off-limits as well.
If we can't even knock the whites for being anti-white....
It's not so surprising McCain would rather have a "clean" loss than a "dirty" win. He loves the adulation of the press, and doesn't want to go down in history as the unholy hybrid of George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Attila the Hun, especially since he never had a chance at winning to begin with.
"The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, ..."
Hmmm. Sounds like an argument for smaller government. Perhaps Rev. Wright should start hanging with Bob Barr.
anonymous says: "Cracking under torture was the most unremarkable, unheroic, predictable thing that could have happened to him after he was captured."
POWs in Vietnam soon recognized that it was virtually impossible to hold out against torture indefinitely, and formulated their own code of conduct which acknowledged that reality. Assuming that it is true that McCain held out for a substantial time, and refused to be released ahead of other prisoners, then I would consider that to be heroic. LOTS of people would have taken the opportunity to get out of that prison, even if it delivered to the N. Vietnamese a substantial propaganda victory. I'm not a McCain supporter, but I believe in giving credit where it's due.
Switiching topics, about 15 years ago, a friend of mine worked as a secretary for Asa Hilliard. On a personal level, she found him quite pleasant and easy to work for (her father was a colleague of Hilliard's) but she wound up leaving the job because of his rather "loose" regard for the facts when it came to securing grants and university funding. She was afraid of legal consequences down the line, but so far as I know, none ever materialized.
And exactly how much credit are the Republicans getting for their forebearance in not going after the juiciest target? Zero. They are being denounced for making a joke about community organizers!
The most obvious reason for not bringing up Wright (or Ayers) too much now: they're saving the juicy stuff for the end. Wait until the last two weeks of the campaign, then remind voters of the news stories from March. You bring it up now and the voters will get tired of hearing about it well before the middle of October, and forget about it come November 4.
I'm sure Frank Luntz and all the other experts have a pretty specific idea of how many days you can run commercials on the same subject without the voters screaming "Enough!"
You know what's another conspicuous absence, the lack of any reflection on the intellect of one of the least educated VP nominees in recent memory, here on a site notorious for decrying the lack of robust standards for our political leaders.
Um, no wait, so sorry: what did Al Gore, Jr get his college degree in? Journalism. Did he get a graduate degree in anything? Nope - took graduate classes in religion and law, but never a degree in either.
I will say this about Palin, however. She seems to be the most likeable politician I've seen perhaps ever. The Ace of Spades link to convention footage of her 7-year-old girl was cute. But all the talk about how likeable she is reminds me of the 2000 argument in The Corner about whether voters would prefer to have a beer with Gore or Bush. Bush, of course - yet we know what a post-American, we are the world schmuck he turned out to be.
Maybe it’s the correct strategy; McCain knows the media would paint him a racist and want to win “clean”.
McCain's played plenty dirty. McCain made a backroom deal with Mike Huckabilly: Huckabilly pretended to be conservative in order to split the vote with Mitt, leaving McCain an unobstructed road to the nomination. The two never once said a bad thing about each other.
He's holding off on the Wright commercials until the last week or so.
Anonymous said
"You know what's another conspicuous absence, the lack of any reflection on the intellect of one of the least educated VP nominees in recent memory, here on a site notorious for decrying the lack of robust standards for our political leaders."
I think it's even more conspicuous that Steve hasn't mentioned Palin's creationism. IMO any rational person accepts that the theory of evolution is true in the same sense as other incumbent scientific theories are true. And the T of E seems to play a prominent role in your thinking, Steve. And I guess you're a Republican. As a a mere spectator of your election I'm thoroughly enjoying all this, and I really want to know how intelligent Republicans feel about having a creationist on the ticket. So come on Steve: share your pain.
I think that most Presidents and Vice Presidents throughout history have been Creationists, haven't they? That hasn't seemed to bother evolutionists so far.
Look what happened to the last Republican who mentioned Wright!
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/20/mccain_aide_suspended_over_vid.html
I didn't see the speech, so I can't confirm it, but according to the blog: Mason Conservative http://masonconservative.typepad.com/the_mason_conservative/2008/09/rnc-convention-live-blog-part-ii.html Michael Steele brought up the Rev. Wright at 9:05 EDT.
"Um, no wait, so sorry: what did Al Gore, Jr get his college degree in? Journalism."
No, he worked as a journalist for a brief period but his degree was in government. I'm not even concerned about the level of education or school it was earned from, but the underlying IQ that it proxies for. Do I really need to point out the relevancy of IQ for electing someone to this office, one with the potential for assuming the presidency, on a site like this?
anonymous:
Didn't Steve have some estimate of Gore's likely IQ, based on SATs or ASVABs or something? My recollection is that Gore and Bush and Kerry were all likely pretty close in terms of likely intelligence.
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