[THS] !!!! Mike Whitney: The Jeremiah Wright You Won't Hear on FOX News

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19837.htm

    The Jeremiah Wright You Won't Hear on FOX News

    By Mike Whitney

    29/04/08 "ICH" --- - Jeremiah Wright is 5' 10 '' of tightly-packed
explosives. He may be the best public speaker since Martin Luther King. He
is bright, passionate, insightful and erudite. When he speaks; the sparks fly
and the ground shakes. Yesterday, when Wright took the podium at the
National Press Club, he knew he'd be taken to task no matter what he said.
He knew that every word he uttered would be twisted by the media to
make him look like a hate-monger, or worse, a racist. But Wright faced his
critics with dignity and delivered another barnburner. By the end of the
speech, everyone in attendance was on their feet applauding wildly for the
man the corporate media has chosen to destroy.

       Reverend Wright:

         "Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and girls to fight in the
Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the present two wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.  My goddaughter’s unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those
who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid
military service, while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls of every
race to die over a lie." (Standing ovation)


          Right on. Wright doesn't mince his words. He knows what's he wants
to say and says it with gusto. Like Nietzsche opined, "If you want to be
philosopher, bring a hammer". Wright brought his hammer yesterday, only
it turned out to be a sledgehammer.

        Reverend Wright:

        "Our congregation took a stand against apartheid when the
government of our country was supporting the racist regime of the African
government in South Africa.
        
      "Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador
and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-
Contra scandal, was supporting the Contras, who were killing the peasants
and the Miskito Indians in those two countries.

        "Our congregation sent 35 men and women through accredited
seminaries to earn their master of divinity degrees, with an additional 40
currently being enrolled in seminary, while building two senior citizen
housing complexes and running two child care programs for the poor, the
unemployed, the low-income parents on the south side of Chicago for the
past 30 years.

      "Our congregation feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families
every year, while our government cuts food stamps and spends billions
fighting in an unjust war in Iraq." (second standing ovation)


          The prophetic theology of the black church, which Wright preaches,
is a theology of liberation and transformation. This isn't the Jesus who
provides fatter paychecks and vacation homes in the Barbados. This is Jesus
the radical who came to deliver his people from bondage; to end
segregation and Jim Crow, and to bring positive, meaningful and
permanent change to "a social order that has gone sour."

           Rev. Wright:

           "God does not want one people seeing themselves as superior to
other people.  God does not want the powerless masses, the poor, the
widows, the marginalized, and those underserved by the powerful few to
stay locked into sick systems which treat some in the society as being more
equal than others in that same society."


           Right again. Wright's message is uncontroversial. So who put the
bull's-eye on his back and decided to make him out to be a clownish
caricature of a raging black radical spewing vitriol? It wasn't a black man,
that's for sure. Was it someone who had a stake in the upcoming election
and knew the best way to destroy Obama was to create a straw-man who
would embody the very characteristics that make white people
"uncomfortable"?

          Who decided that there would be no Obama campaign; just
Jeremiah Wright front-n-center 24-7 on every news channel and every front
page? Who decided that Wright would have a larger media entourage than
candidate Obama? Who decided that Iraq, the economy, and health care
would all vanish from the national debate and voters would have to cast
their ballots according to whether they liked Jeremiah Wright or not?

         Obama's supporters say that Obama wants to "transcend" race; that
he wants to span the racial divide and move forward. Great, but how?
Obama doesn't pick what issues the media focuses on. Neither does Wright.
Nor did Wright choose to make himself the center of attention; that decision
was made at the highest level of the corporate establishment where the
ruling body deploys journalists in a way that best promotes their own
narrow interests. In this case, the media was tasked to sort through 15
years of backlogged sermons so they could extract a few choice tidbits that
could be used to shock whites. The flap over Jeremiah Wright, who no one
even heard before, is completely fabricated with the intention of derailing
Obama's candidacy. Everybody knows that.

         The media is omniscient; they remain invisible behind the camera
lens. But there's no doubt about their objectives or that they've become a
big player in the electoral process. The media sees itself as a "kingmaker";
their job is to shape public opinion using the tools at their disposal. This
particular incident brings back the infamous "Dean scream", which was
replayed on commercial TV over 900 times during a 48 hour period, with a
background narrative which suggested that Dean was mentally unstable. It
worked, too. Dean's approval ratings plummeted after the onslaught and
the threat of an antiwar candidate appearing in the general election
disappeared. Another triumph for the blue suits.

        Jeremiah Wright is being used the same way. As Max Blumenthal
said, Wright is being used "to mobilize resentment against Barack
Obama....He is presented as the quintessential angry black man that the
right wing loves to incite hatred against.”

        This is the classic Swift-boating technique; choose a divisive issue
(Race, abortion, immigration) and then find someone who can be used to
embody the controversy. Wright is just the unlucky fellow who drew the
short straw. If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. After all, the
real target is Obama; he's the real trophy. The prospect of a black man ---
however articulate and capable---occupying  the Oval Office still sends
shutters down the spines of America's WASPish oligarchs. That's
"bonesman" territory, and they mean to keep it that way.

           The media's job is to make it look like Obama and Wright are joined
at the hip; whatever comes out of Wright's mouth gets pinned on Obama.
It's guilt by association and it appears to be working. Obama's approval
ratings are slipping and his supporters are are frustrated. The public is
wondering, "Why are black people so angry; and why is that Reverend
Wright saying such mean things about America? Maybe I was wrong about
that Obama fellow after all."

        But Wright is no fool. He's aware of the media's cynical agenda and
he's facing it head-on. He doesn't vacillate or turn to putty like Pelosi and
the other moral vagabonds in the Democratic congress. Wright is tempered
steel; 100 percent Marine. No surrender. He knows that the gains in race
relations have never come at the ballot box, but in the streets and in the
churches and in the prisons. That where the where the real change comes;
"transformational" change.

        Rev. Wright:

           "The prophetic theology of the black church, during the days of
chattel slavery, was a theology of liberation.  It was preached to set free
those who were held in bondage spiritually, psychologically, and sometimes
physically.  And it was practiced to set the slaveholders free from the notion
that they could define other human beings or confine a soul set free by the
power of the gospel.

        "God’s desire is for positive change; real change, not cosmetic change;
radical change or a change that makes a permanent difference,
transformation.  God’s desire is for transformation, changed lives, changed
minds, changed laws, changed social orders, and changed hearts in a
changed world."

        Amen, Reverend. Give 'em hell.

        Here's the video:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19836.htm