Around and About Obama's Pastor

Here a caveat: I know lots of smart, good people don't know all that much about our history because our history books are not as honest as they could be. Also, I know lots of smart, good people don't have political memories that go back more than six months, or the time or fortitude to try to get context on crazy "issues" that come up in campaigns. Ok. That said, here goes:

First: I don't know how many more times, or how strongly, Obama can say some version of "Wright was often wrong, I do not agree with his statements." He's going to say it AGAIN tonight on TV. I would rather hear him and Clinton talking about the differences in their proposals for responding the economic troubels we're in. But, then, I vote on issues and policy -- not race, or gender, or whether I'd like to date/drink with/invite to a bar-b-que a candidate.

Because I don't live in a world all my own.

PBS's MacNeil News Hour last night had a 15 minute disussion about The Pastor Panic. Generally, very interesting and helpful comments were made. But, the man from the ethics society said, by way of racial comparison, that if it were discovered that McCain belonged to a church headed by a loud right-wing conspiracy theorist whose sermons incited anger and hate, the issue would stick around just as it has with Obama.

Maybe. Now. It might.

But it is still a non-issue over which the GOP consultants are "lickinig their chops" according to this morning's CNN story. Greaaaat.

We've had a president whose religious friends and advisors were nuts in ways quite similar in form (but not content) to the way Wright is nuts. For eight years, that president has been both culturally supporting and economically screwing the far-right culturally conservative hate mongers who got him elected. Gay people, according to these folks, are the new communist threat. In some documentaries, Buchanan has admitted that when the Cold War ended, the conservatives needed a new enemy, and they picked this tee-tiny, politically disenfranchised, minority community -- because they have ballistic missiles in their condos, you know. These scary people used the angst and economic stresses as motivators for their congregations to want to repeal the gains of the Civil Rights and Women's movements and the New Deal to boot, and many would like to see "fags burn in hell" as their demonstrations at some famous burials of dead sons in Wyoming have shown. Fallwell after 9-11 anyone? God punished America because we tolerate gays, and women's rights, and abortion, and the whole catalogue. (I would ask, then what really does He have against the Gulf Coast and Florida? What are those folks up to? Come to think of it, didn't that KKK guy get elected down that way back in the early oughts?? David Duke? Maybe God doesn't like him. Who knows.)

I mean, 9-11 had no historical connection to the 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan who fought the Soviets in our proxy war, and then we abandoned that country to try to rebuild itself, and the power vacuum let the Taliban and Al Qaeda get a good, deep, foothold there .... noooooo. Not at all. Couldn't be related. Couldn't we were a bit shortsighted on that back under Regan? Noooo. ---And Bush and the right labeled anyone who suggested historical shortsightedness and selfishness as part of the opportunity (if not cause) of that horror, well, they were anti-American. Not historically honest, just plain bad.

These way-right-evangelicals were Bush's buddies and congregations, and he said so, and No One Challenged Him On It In Two Elections! Not the press, not the other candidates. -- Bush did not have to repudiate these nut-jobs whose God is so hateful and scared. In fact, he did quite a bit to try to legislate their cultural agendas. Because they love America, but they hate me and my ethnic and my gay friends in a blazing hot way --- Not in the mainstream press. Harper's and The Nation and Mother Jones and Ms. and Tikkun raised these questions, but y'all out there in the big media did not listen, would not stand up to the business agendas of your corporate bosses and hold the man's feet to the fire--which is your job. Did not bring these cultural points to bear against that loon and his hawkish but criminally stupid and atavistic friends.

I suppose we learned our lesson, but we're using that shiny new knowledge to bash a candidate who is Clearly Capable of doing his own critical thinking and who does not, like so many of the poor sheep, just up and swallow what ever his pastor is serving up or whatever hubbub is circulating via email. Obama is not beholden to a religious and cultural agenda in the way Bush was, not by a long shot. To think that Wright=Obama, you have to believe that Obama is an idiot -- and if you believed that, you would not be attacking him for things Another Man Said. You would be pointing out that his principles and ideas are idiotic. Which you are not. Because there is no traction there for you, dear GOP.

So, now we're applying the lesson. Well, good for us.

Some of my mother's bridge partners (Clinton voters, at least by demographic) were excited about Obama, but now they're just "so dissapointed." That is white middle class code for "shocked." On this, two points. First: name me one person in your life who has never disappointed/shocked you (that is not your god). Just One.

Second: Let's think about Obama's work when he was in Chicago. He's working with blacks and Many Other Ethnic and Social Groups on the south side of Chicago, which is where Chicago "kept" blacks and the Irish, conveniently away from the WASPs up northside. It's where the economically depressed neighborhoods are, its where a socially conscious lawyer would be working, the people he would be working with and for are living, and it would make all the sense in the world for him to worship in a church that they attend. Because seeing him in church on Sunday makes him personally available, knowable, trustworthy. And one thing many disenfrancshised blacks don't trust is a privileged one. It made professional and political sense for him to attend that church. It made him, in short, part of the community.

Now, Wright has retired some time ago. Now, Obama is running for President, which would make him the representative of all of us, all of us. And guess what? He's shown us that he doesn't follow Wright's party line. He has worked with, and it is publically documented, every kind of American there is, befriended, supported, etc. He's related to some of every one of our demographics. Not just said it in that great speech (though, abou the Muslims, Obama....), but SHOWN his cross cultural and cross ethnic cooperation in his work his whole career. He does not just talk the talk, people.

Which I think is a very good thing given the recently expanded powers of the Executive Branch.

I would be "disappointed" if Obama had said what Wright did. But, let's try to remember the example I give my white students when they give me the "why do we have to deal with this race stuff, everything's fine now...." line. Well, my dear historical innocents, listen up. My great uncle Bill, who was white, died by shooting himself in the gut by accident while out deer hunting in West Texas. (yes, really, great story) My cousin Mary, who is black, her great uncle Bill died while being lynched and disembowled by white people in East Texas (some of them probably also my cousins). And those same white people, all across the US and North and South, also lynched women (some pregnant) and children. So, our conversations about "rememeber great uncle Bill" around the dinner table have different emotions, tones, and lessons associated with them. This dirty little secret is not a cultural practice that we emphasize in our history books. Liberal-y white families also don't brag about their great-grandpa who organized that lynching in ____________, back in the day while telling family history at Thanksgiving. Becuase it would be embarassing and "disappointing" to do so. So, that horror is still in living black, but not white, memory, you see.

Plus, let's review Jim Crow and racist economic policy and ...... oh boy. I wind up being a history prof all just to explain to them why the narrator of The Invisible Man is invisible, and pissed off. But, props to the kids: they don't get it. They're really a bunch more cool about being friends with people who don't look like them, or speak with the same accent, or have sex like they do. Which, folks in the Baby Boom generation, and the in-between generation of Obama, well, not as easily as these kids and some of us in Gen X. --- The cultural right is pissed that the social changes instigated by the brave of those generations are working.

And Obama is paying for it. (So's Clinton, but that's another post)

Folk in Chicago have these scary family stories too. That's why they moved to Chicago and New York and St. Louis from the Jim Crow South in the first place!!!! And then, well, things only got a little better. And the whites moved out of the cities, and the tax based dropped out, and .... voila! The conditions we refer to now when we say "urban". Chicago aint' much different from St. Louis, and y'all know how cozy the races are here, how equitably public funds are distributed, what great care people get at the public hospital in East St. Louis with its abundant funding, how marvelous St. Louis's public urban schools are. (please, connect some dots)

So, deal with your disappointment, mom's not very well informed friends. No one's whole history, including yours, is spotless. Do you also think the Hillary Nut Cracker is just a cute novetly toy? Come on. We still have lots of very hard working through to do with our history.

It's the policy, stupid. It's the advisors who will be the Cabinet, stupid. And on policy and advisors, McCain is Bush III. Are you really looking forward to four more years of this? Really? Are you? Over this "issue"? When you will need to also elect more Dems to Congress in order to get either Clinton's or Obama's policies made into legal reality? Really, this is where you want to focus your concern and worry? Well, knock yourself out.