Jim Crow Strikes Back

I am loathe to write about a topic that has been way over-discussed in the media and the blogosphere, but I have yet to hear an actual sane point of view about the subject of Obama's preacher.

I have not sought out the clips on YouTube, so I have only seen the snippets that have been shown on the 24-hour news channels. But since it is their MO to show only the most incendiary and controversial of anything, I'm pretty sure I've seen the worst that the reverend said.

I won't even go into the speech that Obama gave on the topic Tuesday because better commentators than I have already said what needs to be said on that subject. I will say that I agree with the people whose point of view is that it was the best speech on the topic of race in America since Martin Luther King, Jr. was still walking the Earth.

But I have watched as newscaster after newscaster has referred to Pastor Wright's comments as "hate speech," "racist," "treasonous," "highly offensive" and even "anti-Semitic." At best, the people who have defended him have tried to take the tack of explaining it away as a guy who grew up in the generation of Jim Crow so we should give him a break.

What I haven't seen is someone stand up and ask what exactly he said that was so wrong. And that's my question, what did this guy do that was so bad? From what I can tell, the thing he said that has everyone's panties in a bunch was to suggest that maybe the United States' foreign policy decisions over years, that has helped to destabilize just about every non-white country on the planet, may have something to do with people hating us enough to want to crash planes into our buildings. Granted, he said it in the form of a hyperbole-laden, god-invoking fervor of a sermon which, as a non-believer, makes me uncomfortable. But besides the fact that the argument is better and more calmly made by someone like Noam Chomsky, what did this guy say that was so offensive?

Even from the so-called "liberal" side of the commentators in the media there has only really been a defense of his right to free speech, and a defense of Obama's right to not have to be pegged with these opinions uttered by someone else, but not the actual point being made.

We are a country founded in the ideas of the Enlightenment (not on Christian dogma as the right-wing history re-writers like to claim) and there was a time in our history that intellectual thought was revered.

When did we become a country of platitudes and conformity? When did we become a place where someone making an opposing argument and they are shouted down with false accusations of hate and bigotry? And when did we become a place that being called a racist by the likes of Pat Buchanan or Sean Hannity could be anything but laughable?

The whole patriotic "my-country-right-or-wrong" dogma is just silly. The idea that we should unconditionally love our country because of the happenstance of being born here is one of the silliest parts of American culture. Those of us that try to criticize our government's actions are labeled with the "blame America first" soundbite that the media is so complicit in lending credence. This nationalistic and jingoistic fervor is exactly the kind of thing that helped the Nazis take power in the 1930s.

Once we take away the ability and the right to take our government to task it's all over. The Orwellian world is upon us.

The sad thing about this whole madness is that the people with the racist agenda are the ones being allowed to accuse others of being racists. From Hannity to Buchanan to the Chicago Tribune's John Kass, they are framing this whole thing as an "Afro-racists agenda" and it is probably working.

Our current president and the new Republican nominee have aligned themselves with people that have laid the blame for the attacks of September 11, 2001 on gay people, abortionists, the ACLU and feminism; and even said that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for not doing enough to protect Israel. And they have the gall to accuse Obama of supporting bigotry?

Falwell, Robertson and Hagee get half a second of news coverage for their hate-filled bigoted comments, yet the media can't stop going on and on about Pastor Wright's comments, which are legitimate criticisms of our government and not hate speech.

What started with the attacks on Michelle Obama actually having the nerve to suggest that maybe black people haven't had a lot to be proud of in this country in the past, continues with these attacks on a black man who has the nerve to have an opinion.

What they are really mad about is that an uppity nigger has the chance to become President of the United States, and they plan to do everything they can to stop him.

Unfortunately, I don't have any doubt that they will succeed.

I continue to be ashamed to be an American.