Bob Herbert on Wright - narcissistic revenge

[JoFerret]

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big-time news media — this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it.

It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.

So there he was lecturing an audience at the National Press Club about everything from the black slave experience to the differences in sentencing for possession of crack and powdered cocaine.

All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come up with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.

This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency

More at:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/opinion/29herbert.html

[mattclearing]

1. It's a valid question. n/t

[MADem]

2. Bob Herbert speaks for me! That's EXACTLY my impression of the Wright mess.

DEVASTATING, indeed:

...The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

On Sunday night, in an appearance before the Detroit N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Wright mocked the regional dialects of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. I’m not sure how he felt that was helpful in his supposed quest to bring about a constructive discussion about race and reconciliation....What he is succeeding in doing is diminishing the stature of Senator Obama. A candidate who stands haplessly by as his former spiritual guide roams the country dropping one divisive bomb after another is in very little danger of being seen by most voters as the next J.F.K. or L.B.J.

The thing to keep in mind about Rev. Wright is that he is a smart fellow. He’s been a very savvy operator, politically and otherwise, for decades. He has built a thriving, politically connected congregation on the South Side of Chicago that has done some very good work over the years. Powerful people have turned to him for guidance and advice.

So it’s not like he’s naïve politically. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Forget the gibberish about responding to attacks on the black church. That is not what the reverend’s appearance before the press club was about. He was responding to what he perceives as an attack on him.....My guess is that Mr. Wright felt he’d been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to his former pastor’s defense. What we’re witnessing now is Rev. Wright’s “I’ll show you!” tour.

.....

[boston bean]

3. It's too bad Obama tied himself to him in his speech in Philadelphia. He won't be able to untie

himself from the reverend.

He compared wright to his grandmother.

[Voltaire]

10. That would only be true for the weak-minded

nt

[Armstead]

13. yeah, that loyalty thing is such a crock

I think the focus should be on Obama's loyalty to people, rather than just taking the easy way out and throw anyone whoi is politically inconvient under the bus.

Wright is being a Judas to Obama.

But I don't fault Obama for trying to do the right thing and defend Wright and the church while trying to extracate himself in Philly.

[cali]

4. herbert is spot on, imo

I don't get why so many Obama supporters don't see this.

[JoFerret]

12. The whole fiasco

is a mini Shakespearean tragedy. Complete with egos on stage and ghosts from history.

It's all quite disheartening. One thing for sure - JW is no MLK. but he is no monster either. This is about him. I don't know what else to say. I find it all quite disheartening.

[high density]

5. Wright seems to be going overboard at playing the press game

I have to wonder if this is a plan to make everybody so burned out about him so that when it comes back up again in late October, everybody rolls their eyes and says, "Not this old shit again!"

Are people who didn't seem to be affected by "The Wright Issue" the first time around now suddenly going to see something different this time?

What pisses me off the most is that the press is playing this Wright == Obama game, and all sides of DU seems to be lapping it up in various ways like it's a valid argument!

[JoFerret]

15. The NYTimes below the fold front page news peice

was pretty devastating I thought.

[high density]

18. The one that says "Not Speaking for Obama, Pastor Speaks for Himself, at Length"

“He does not speak for me; he does not speak for the campaign,” Mr. Obama said Monday.

And while Mr. Wright’s behavior may not have been politic for Mr. Obama, it was politics as usual for the television age. In at least one way, Mr. Wright’s star turn may have helped defuse his importance in the long run. The pastor who was thrust upon the public consciousness as a caricature of the angry black man emerged after an exhaustive series of performances as a more familiar television persona: a voluble, vain and erudite entertainer, a born televangelist who quotes Ralph Ellison as well as the Bible and mixes highfalutin academic trope with salty street talk.

While MSNBC was waiting to go live to the (National Press Club) event, an anchor asked Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, why the campaign had allowed Mr. Wright to refocus attention upon himself. “He is doing his own thing,” Mr. Axelrod said wearily by telephone. “There’s not a thing we can do about it.”

By the time Mr. Wright had finished speaking, he had proved Mr. Axelrod’s point. And also one made by Chuck Todd, the NBC political director who summed up Mr. Wright’s apologia by paraphrasing a Carly Simon song: “You’re so vain, I bet you think this campaign is about you.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29watc.html?ref=todayspaper

I don't know what else Obama can do at this point.

[Pryderi]

6. Rev. Wright is becoming Al Sharpton and Obama is Tawana Brawley. THROW JEREMIAH UNDER THE BUS!

[cali]

7. wtf? Just how is Obama Tawana Brawley?

Do explain that bizarre comparison.

[Pryderi]

9. Just as Al Sharpton used Tawana Brawley to gain a national spotlight, Wright is using

Barack to do the same.

[JoFerret]

20. Indeed

and who plays Steven Pagones

[JoFerret]

21. And just who has the role of

Steven Pagones?

[GoldieAZ49]

8. Battle of the egomaniacs Wright vs Obama

nice sideshow as the presidential election process slows down

Hillary and McCain however continue to run for POTUS

[Armstead]

14. Hillary isn't an egomaniac?

Maybe you're talking about some otehr Hillary.

[NoodleyAppendage]

17. She's more sociopathic...the narcissism is secondary. n/t

J

[reflection]

11. Good grok. n/t

[BigDDem]

16. Bob Herbert is a racist!!

:rofl:

[redqueen]

19. Thanks.

[McCamy Taylor]

22. Class warfare. Proves Lucy Parson's point that it is money that is the root of racism.

Bob Herbert is carrying water for the corporate establishment. So, he tosses liberation theology under the bus. Recall the Bob Herbert wrote an article in early January in which he printed lies about the Clintons---the "she compared Dr. King to LBJ unfavorably lie" and the "he called Obama's campaign a fairy tale lie"--even though his own NYT has already published retractions of their own lies the day before. That makes Bob Herbert a big fat media liar .

Rev. Wright, on the other hand, spoke nothing but the truth as it has already been spoken by liberation theologists working in some of the most desperately poor countries in this hemisphere. The religious tradition which he represents is as old as Christianity, because Christianity was a reaction to Roman imperialism.

People who go begging at the table of the corporate establishment and content themselves with crumbs are going to get a great big fascist boot planted in their neck---and the rest of the working class with continue to suffer.