Categorical Aperitif

On the Wright controversy, on yesterday's Democracy Now!:

I know that—look, Jeremiah Wright was in this church for thirty-six years. I had never met him. I belong to the United Church of Christ denomination, but I had never heard of Jeremiah Wright. He was a local pastor. That was his calling. That was his commitment. That was his passion. If Obama had not been in his congregation, we’d never have heard of Jeremiah Wright.

But over the—someone figured out, at Christian Century magazine, figured out that over thirty-six years on the 11:00 Sunday morning services, he had preached 207,711 minutes. And the sound bites that were being looped throughout the mainstream media and the rightwing media were sixteen to twenty seconds. How would you like for your long career in journalism as a broadcaster to be summed up at the end in sixteen to twenty seconds? I understand that anger, that frustration, that he—that was driving him to finally want to speak.

When you think of it that way, it's a lot harder to blame the guy for seizing the chance to speak. It may have given The Daily Show some fodder (why the dancing? why the lame accents?), and it may have inconvenienced Barack Obama, but tough sh*t. I fear that one day we may all come to appreciate the lesson Reverend Wright just gave us in how not to let ourselves be turned into straw men.