The Stupidest Man in America
For the past week, I'm been trying to come up with a topper, but I haven't been able to. The competition for "Most Stupid" is fierce, but after Tuesday #1 remains untouched.
No, George Bush doesn't make that lofty height. Sure, appearing on TV game shows, dancing and doing comedy shtick at banquets during a war is pretty stupid, but it's more insensitive, thoughtless and crude.
Hillary Clinton would get votes for her tarmac fake-recollections and fake-chugging, but pandering doesn't fully qualify as stupidity.
Barack Obama had his stupid "bitter" moment. But not coming up with a synonym warmer and fuzzier than "bitter" is mainly careless.
John McCain has a smorgasbord of stupid comments, from repeatedly misidentifying al-Qaeda to "100 years" and "Bomb-Bomb-Iran." But these are more intentional ploys, than pure stupid.
Of course, there are several young, female pop singers and actresses who could make the Olympics of Stupidity. However, those are circus-geek stupid.
In the end, the most stupid person in America remains Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
What's impressive about Reverend Wright's world-class stupidity is that you don't even have to know what he said, and stupidity doesn't get much more profound than that. It's like watching a movie when they only show the horrified reaction of others running out of a room screaming -- you may not know what terrible thing went on inside, you just know it was really scary.
Given Reverend Wright's calling, he obviously knows well the song, "He Has the Whole World in His Hands." Reverend Wright had the whole world in his hands. And he ignored his own teaching. He let it fall through his fingers.
For all the words used to describe his actions, therein above all lies his stupidity.
There is only one reason anyone, anywhere cares what Reverend Wright has to say, outside of his church. And even his church probably doesn't care much anymore, since he's now retired. It's the only reason anyone is uploading videos of him on the Internet, why journalists are interviewing him, why networks are putting him on the TV. The one reason is basic: he was Barack Obama's pastor. Period.
And he pissed off his meal ticket. For no reason.
Like us all, Reverend Wright is entitled to his opinions. Some may be profound, some lunatic. Whatever. They're his opinions. To each his own.
Most of us though don't have CNN sticking a camera in our face to present those opinions to the world. Reverend Wright did. What an opportunity! Imagine if whatever you thought about the world, about religion, about who should play quarterback, about where the WMD really are hidden, about anything, would be broadcast everywhere. Everyone hanging on what you had to say next. The influence you would have. The importance. The status.
Reverend Jeremiah Wright had all that. And all he had to do was clench his teeth for six months. And he couldn't handle that. He didn't have to be silent, he could have talked about religion and race and who should win the Oscar. Just not the loony stuff. And he couldn't handle that.
If Barack Obama wins the national election, Jeremiah Wright would have been "Pastor to the President of United States." Whatever he said, cameras would be perched outside his front door. He could have set up a TV Network pool in his den, for all anyone cared. Every word of his beamed to the waiting, if occasionally incredulous world.
All the Reverend Wright had to do is wait for six months. Six months. And the world was his. He's an adult, he's mature, he's a very smart fellow, he could do it.
Except he couldn't. He just couldn't help himself. He had to yammer. He had to have the attention. He had to yell out now, NOW, just because he could. It's like he had no filter. This has been like watching a three-year-old pounding the floor "I want it now!!!! Me Me Me!!! Noowwwwww!" As a result, he's getting his message out -- but it's going to last 15 minutes, not eight years. And it's already lost any meaning, after just four of those minutes. He had eight years of attention awaiting him, from the biggest platform imaginable. Pastor to the President of the United States.
Man, talk about a real bully pulpit.
Just think: he was pastor to Barack Obama. The one reason anyone cared what he had to say. The only person in the world you want to keep on your good side. Not the person you want to have say that your comments "offend me, rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. That's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today."
Reverend Jeremiah Wright had the whole world in his hands, people waiting to listen to his every thought about faith and race. It's an opportunity most people can only dream about. And he had the dream. Something he must have waited his whole life for. And he couldn't wait six months.
Jeremiah Wright is an accomplished man. A Bachelor's degree, two Masters degrees, a Doctorate. And he was a Marine.
He was a Marine. Where in the world did all that discipline go?
Semper fie.
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Interesting. We're in the middle of a typically one-sided DARIA (Dialogue About Race in America), and you offer your view that Wright should have simply shut up and played the game.
Maybe Wright wasn't into shutting up and playing the game. And to label him "stupid" for blowing a big hole into the B.O. campaign? Please. He delivered his damage very skillfully.
A cynic might suggest that Wright was annoyed because Obama had stolen the mike from him, that he felt Obama was reaping the benefits of a "dialogue" that HE had, after all, started. Someone less cynical might suggest that Wright saw something he didn't like about Obama and the way he was running his campaign, and that he opted to use his time in the limelight to hurt Obama. Perhaps to demonstrate how vulnerable Obama happens to be. As in weak. To inspire people to reconsider their support for such a lightweight.
It's very possible Wright saw Obama as both weak and a panderer. Let's say neither quality met with his approval. Then we have a good possible reason for his behavior.
At any rate, Wright obviously doesn't care for being used. Good for him.
Wright did wait. He waited and hoped that the attacks and misrepresentations would stop. They did not stop. And then it became clear that not only would they not stop, but the Republican party of North Carolina was preparing a campaign of 'swiftboat" ads against Obama regarding Wright.
Enough was enough. There is a comment in the Black culture that simply says, "I ain't go stay hit." Wright simply decided that he was not going to stay hit. He said as much in his allusion to "the dozens."
He could not have been Obama's pastor after that initial, prolonged attack.. But he would not have been anyway. He made it clear that if Obama was President on November 5th, that he (Wright) would be coming after him as the man in charge of the foot on the throats of people oppressed by this government. And that is the clearest indication that Elisberg and his colleagues have absolutely no idea who Jeremiah Wright is.
Wright is no where near the stupidest man in America. That distinction belongs individually and collectively to presumely intelligent journalists and pundits who would not and did not listen to the full sermons of Wright before condemning him. Context is everything, and it used to be the lifeblood for true journalists - but they are far and few in between these days.
You misspelled "semper fi"
'Not the person you want to have say that your comments "offend me, rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. That's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally today." '
It's odd that he left out "expediently." That's what it was, of course. He said what he needed to say and would say whether it's sincere or not, and it doesn't wipe off the stink of two decades of listening without protest to his spiritual guide's teachings.
I love the holier-than-thou attitude that comes out of people. He's been a member of the church for 17 years. He does not go to church every Sunday. It has been stated that Rev. Wright does not preach in the manner shown on the tapes most Sermons. People that go to church are not zombies. They can think for themselves. If you do not hear what is said every sermon, how do you condemn them. People right here, on these blogs, knows someone that says offensive things. You don't throw them out of your lives. Most of us accept them. We sometimes object, but normally just go with the flow...accept when it comes to judging someone else. Judging them on things that has nothing to do with how he has performed his duties in his past and presumebly in the future. I don't see any objections to McCain going out and begging for Hagee's endorsement or repudiating his spiritual mentor Rod Parsley's statements. FRAUDS!!!
My problem is that Obama was willing (no, eager) to defend Wright so long as Wright was an asset (however unexpected) to his campaign. When Wright turned on him, suddenly it was Operation Condemn Wright. Had the press not played along with the whole farce, it might have looked even sillier.
(I'll never forget the look of rage on Keith Olbermann's face the next day--a classic "God damn it, here we go again" expression. All he could do, with the help of Howard Fineman, was hiss insults about Hillary. Rachel Maddow looked frightened.)
Two big questions should occur to us: 1) Why was Obama so vulnerable to an attack from such a minor figure, and 2) Why didn't someone, especially Obama himself, anticipate Wright's betrayal? An ant should have seen it coming.
It's not as if Obama didn't know the guy....
...and he is kicking himself as we speak.
Reverend Wright has done an appalling disservice to the Black church, to Christianity, to people of color, to the poor, to the City of Chicago and to Senator Obama.
I had developed a little sympathy for him following the explanation that the "chickens coming to roost" were not his own words. Now I think of him as egomaniacal buffoon - same as Rush Limbaugh on the right. The title of this article fits.
You're absolutely right.
He had the opportunity to let the Holy Spirit speak through him in an intelligent, peaceful, and beautiful way and increase the faith of millions of Americans.
He chose instead to speak in a confrontational, and most narcissistic and egotistical manner, speaking in an urgent and very unappealling non-stop way which gave one little or no time to breathe or relax, to take in well what he had to say; but he said nothing about truly following the path to God, Love, or Wisdom.
We Christians know how thirsty the world is for true wisdom and patience. This man knows a little bit about this wisdom, because he has seen many things as a pastor. he so obviously let his ego get the best of him, it made me sick to my stomach.
Such an absolutely inexcusable waste of talent and opportunity.
Shame on him.
As I understand it, Wright pastors in the prophetic tradition. Unfortunately, it appears he attempted the self-fulfilling prophecy of preventing his former parishoner from attaining a status that would have decimated Wright's argument that African Americans cannot rise to deserved levels of success in the US.
Most fortunately, however, it also appears his sabotage was in vain.
We still have so much to do to be the country we are capable of being. I am touched and grateful and yes, deeply hopeful, that we are continuing on the path.
As long as we keep our wits and proceed to heal our country's divisions, the Wright episode will be a strange and sad reminder of where we once were, but not where we are now headed.
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