The Dish

A reader writes:

I really disagree with your post about religious freedom in the Navy at least. I know the AF academy has been in the press about this issue, but my experience after 20 years as a medical corps officer has been very different.  I think, though, that the Navy has a long tradition of independence of thought that may not be present in the other services (see Admiral Fallon, perhaps)–I think this is due to the fact that until recently, ships at sea were out of regular communication with HQ and so there may be more delegated authority and decentralized decision making in the Navy than in other services. 

I am a semi agnostic UCC member and I and have NEVER felt pressured to have more fundamental Christian beliefs.

I was married by a fundamentalist Baptist chaplain who thought my husband and I were a bit nuts with some of our quasi Buddhist beliefs, but he didn’t try to convert us. The chaplain with whom I worked closest at National Naval medical center caring for injured marines was a Jewish rabbi.  About 10 years ago I was deployed to provide humanitarian assistance to Kurdish evacuees during Ramadan and the chaplain we had with us was Muslim.  We made sure all of the food complied with Muslim dietary laws and brought in Lamb for the Eid celebration.  Recently I was at a series of classes for retiring military officers and sat next to a Navy chaplain who told me that the most interesting experience he had on active duty was ensuring that the Wiccans on his ship had a place to worship and working with them to ensure that their requirements were met.  This is no joke! 

In North Carolina today:

"Some of the comments that Rev. Wright has made offend me, and I understand why they offend the American people. He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign."

Marc has a longer quote. I reiterate that I think Obama has to make clear again that he vehemently opposes the use of race to divide and separate and inflame ancient grievances; that he wants to get beyond the racial politics of the Vietnam era; that he is dedicated to overcoming race and offering hope – not obsessing about race in order to foment anger and bitterness. Parts of the message Wright gave today were not just alien to Obama’s stated views – but actively hostile to them. Obama cannot explain that often enough.
 

Christopher Beam’s thoughts on McCain now saying that using Wright is legitimate:

…on the one hand McCain wants people to know he’s upstanding and above the fray and all that. But on the other, he’d be a fool not to use Wright against Obama. This tension is likely to dog McCain through November. Then there’s always the possibility that harping on Wright could backfire. The moment it stops being about patriotism and starts being about race, McCain could get burned as badly if not worse than Obama.

Wright has now made McCain’s conundrum easier. Obama’s too.

A reader gets it:

Jeremiah Wright fucked Obama today and fucked him good. Remember how good everything felt right after Obama historical speech in Pennsylvania — like we might inch toward an honest discussion on race? Wright seemed to do everything he could this morning to shut that down. There were some interesting comments in his speech, comments that did not trouble me. But then we reached that Q&A and I practically watched it through my fingers. His comments on Zionism made me sick. And his surprisingly un-nuanced answer to his statement about 9/11? That was a gift to Karl Rove and the freak show. Today has chilled me to the bone.

However, you are correct about the silver lining in this: This is the exact opening Obama needed to slam the door on Wright. And if he does not, even this diehard supporter will be forced to take a small step back. But what I will be interested in seeing is how other African-Americans react to Wright’s Big Moment. Will they see a man who is greedily and arrogantly using the spotlight of this primary race to potentially spoil Obama’s chances and turn against him?

I hope they do. Wright is not Obama and Obama is not Wright. But Obama’s decency has prevented him thus far from the kind of thing that the Clintons would do without even thinking about it. Wright has now removed any guilt or conflict Obama might feel about denouncing him and his approach to race and politics.

I guess I am late to the party, am I not? I didn’t watch Jeremiah Wright’s National Press Club performance live this morning, as every other blogger seemed to. Wright is not on the ticket of any major party, he is not Barack Obama, and I’m not going to be baited into making this campaign about him, or the boomer cultural racial obsessions that so many want this vital election to be about. But then I actually read what he said. I knew he was an exhibitionist; many of his sermons at Trinity, read in their entirety, do fall within the tradition of some prophetic teaching; I can forgive occasional outbursts from fiery preachers; he has done much good in his own neighborhood and his interview with Bill Moyers struck me as defensible; parts of his address at the Press Club were completely uncontroversial and even contained some important truths. But what he said today extemporaneously, the way in which he said it, the unrepentant manner in which he reiterated some of his most absurd and offensive views, his attempt to equate everything he believes with the black church as a whole, and his open public embrace of Farrakhan and hostility to the existence of Israel Zionism, make any further defense of him impossible. This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard:

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America’s chickens are coming home to roost"?

Wright defended it: "Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter’s being vilified for and Bishop Tutu’s being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that’s what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn’t make me this color."

He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").

This is an outright attack on the stated beliefs and policies and values of Barack Obama in a secular setting.

I can well understand why Obama has not disowned the man who helped bring him to Christ. God knows I have had some spiritual mentors whose views I cannot accept in their entirety or some allies in the struggle for gay equality who are not my ideological confreres in many other ways. I have been in a movement where many others – most others – hold views very alien to my own. Obama is a decent human being, and cutting off someone who has nurtured and sustained his faith and been a father figure to him is not in his character. If I believed for one second that Obama shared any of this bile, I couldn’t begin to support him. But Wright’s cooptation of Obama for his own agenda – his assertion that Obama’s distancing from him is insincere – requires, in fact demands a response from Obama.

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright’s views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era’s obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright’s massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

We need a speech or statement from Obama in which he utterly repudiates this poison, however personally difficult that may be, however damaging the impact will be. The statement today will not do it. This is no longer about cynics trying to associate one man’s politics with another. It is  now about Wright attempting to associate himself and some of his noxious, stupid, rancid views with the likely Democratic nominee. Wright has given Obama no choice – and he has also given him another opportunity. He needs to seize it.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

The Rove meme, dutilfully dictated to Fred Barnes, is that Obama’s talk of bipartisanship is belied by his three years in the Senate. Anyone who believes that should read Hilzoy’s post here. It’s the definitive account based on the actual facts, which is why you won’t hear much about it in the MSM. They’re busy covering Jeremiah Wright, a man who, last time I checked, was on no ticket for public office. Money quote:

His legislation is often proposed with Republican co-sponsorship, which brings me to another point: he is bipartisan in a good way. According to me, bad bipartisanship is the kind practiced by Joe Lieberman. Bad bipartisans are so eager to establish credentials for moderation and reasonableness that they go out of their way to criticize their (supposed) ideological allies and praise their (supposed) opponents. They also compromise on principle, and when their opponents don’t reciprocate, they compromise some more, until over time their positions become indistinguishable from those on the other side.

This isn’t what Obama does. Obama tries to find people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle. (This is especially true when one is in the minority party, especially in this Senate: the chances that Obama’s bills will actually become law increase dramatically when he has Republican co-sponsors.)

In many ways, it’s hard to find any of Obama’s thoughtful legislative initiatives that did not involve outreach to Republicans.

A hospital worker stands over bodies of young children on April 28, 2008 in Beit Lahia, Gaza. According a medical source, their home was shelled on April 28, 2008, resulting in the deaths of six Palestinians including four children, their mother and a Palestinian gunman. By Abid Katib/Getty Images.

Deep throats in Switzerland.

McCain’s abandonment of fiscal conservatism and support for an open-ended occupation of Iraq is not, to my mind, a shrewd strategy for the fall, or the right policy for the country. If he wants to keep the Bush tax cuts or even deepen them, he has to show how he would cut military spending or entitlements to pay for them. And if he wants support on his Iraq policy, he has to explain how his strategy would lead to swifter withdrawal than Obama’s. Otherwise, this reader (who seems to be channeling my own views) will join many others in backing the Dems this year, however many qualms we might have about them:

I’m a staunch independent (I’ve never been a member of a political party and likely never will) who thinks progressively about issues like video games, gay marriage or getting the hell out of Iraq, but conservatively about big-government programs, earmarks and the budget. So far, the left is the only side I think indies like me hear these days that’s saying anything we can get behind (but even that’s started to sound kind of empty, lately, too). The right just wants me to come to Jesus (and by "come to Jesus", I mean "blindly accept their myopic, cynical, Machiavellian view of Christianity, in which torture is okay").

I want fiscal conservatism. I want a Goldwater-esque Republican candidate who says he is going to let people live their lives, whether he agrees with them or not. Unfortunately, I’m not going to get that, because the Republican party has forgotten what their party was built upon.

The true shame of the right is that they no longer have any message whatsoever beyond, "Democrats are traitors" and "America is a Christian nation". There is a tremendous hollowing out of the right going on right now, which I think is why Ron Paul got as much press as he did, since he was the only Republican with more to say. (There were things about him I liked, but he did always come off as kind of a nutter to me.)

I’m backing Obama this year, because I can’t see a Hillary Clinton presidency being any less divisive and hateful than the current administration. Obama, while light on the details of his plans, has the look and feel of a guy who can rebuild some of the grace that once existed between the parties. He seems like the kind of guy who can be a role-model President again and who can build bridges. I liked McCain in 2000 and I wish I could have him back, because I don’t recognize this one who stands in his place today. (Perhaps he was abducted by aliens and replaced with a robotic simulacrum?)

I hope that things get dramatically better next term, because they have to get better. The country simply can’t take much more of this.

Clark Stooksbury calls out Glenn Reynolds. Less dishonesty, I’d say, than lazy partisanship and base-pandering. Like we’re surprised?