Reply to G.
No, I don't think the Rev. Wright is a "lunatic." Fanatic I'll let you have. Wright is not wandering about clueless. He's got his eye right on the ball. He obviously knows just what he wants, this being attention from the media, all he can get of it, and at the moment he's getting a lot.
And, unlike Obama, Wright seems to be enjoying himself through it all, first during the interview with his old friend, Bill Moyers, then at the NAACP dinner in Detroit, and Monday, at the National Press Club in Washington, before many of his liberation theology friends.
Wright says his purpose in speaking is to defend the black church, which was for hundreds of years invisible, but is now out in the open and under attack.
Clearly, however, what the Reverend is really doing is displaying his considerable biblical knowledge and quite striking rhetorical skills, all to further his own position and agenda, not those of the black church, nor of his own church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, nor of Trinity church member, Barack Obama.
I don't call into question the Reverend's intelligence. Furthermore, much of what he says is true, although hardly original, in particular when he recounts our shameful treatment of the native Americans and our several hundred year long oppression of black Americans, most of whose ancestors are more American, have been here longer, than most of us.
However, these and other equally unsavory "truths" of our history have probably blinded him to seeing the whole truth. And in his "blindness" he repeated his other much less defensible and long held positions.
Once again he defended his wholehearted attachment to Louis Farrakhan, even had Farrakhan people as body guards at the Press Club. And once again he refused to retract and repudiate his own conspiracy theory in regard to the origin of HIV.
These two "crazy" positions are probably the basis for your term, lunatic. And in fact these two positions alone make one wonder about Wright's judgment regarding everything else.
At the National Press Club event Wright clearly revealed his oratorical gifts and while listening to him you could easily understand how he could hold for so long the rapt attention of the members of his congregation.
Probably those who were not thoroughly persuaded by Wright's rhetoric did not remain in his congregation. Why Barack Obama remained so long is difficult to understand, and not just for you.
I would explain his remaining by his relative innocence and inexperience, that which, probably more than anything else, makes one question, as you do, Barack's readiness to be president.
But you in what you write, why do you continue to mention and fault Barack's contacts with the Weather Underground figure, Bill Ayers? You ought to get over that. Did you ever read the Stanley Fish piece I sent you? That should have made you realize (what I see as anyway) your error for faulting him for those contacts.
Finally, when Barack says, "I may not know Wright as well as I thought," I accept him at his word. How much do we know even those who are closest to us? And furthermore, haven't you ever been mistaken in your judgment about someone in your own life?
Barack probably needed a father when as a young man alone in Chicago he met Wright. His own father had abandoned him when he was 2 years old, and most likely the Rev. Wright became the missing father figure. Again, no reason to condemn Barack for that.
