The Dish

John McCain celebrates March Madness.

A reader writes:

Condemning America in strong terms is indeed “a fundamental part of our literary tradition–as [it] should be of any vibrant democracy” as another reader suggests.  The distinctions between Douglass and Wright are extraordinarily important to note, however: 1. Wright made these comments after racially discriminatory policies had been abolished- whatever the lingering realities of racism in society, they are not the official position of the US government as they were in Douglass’ case, 2. Wright, in many of the clips I heard, was not just attacking racial injustice, but was spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories to boisterous support from his large congregation, spreading divisive lies.

To criticize the government for policies we disagree with, to attack social ills in our midst, to draw attention to unpleasant elements of our history is fair game.  Those clips of Dr. Wright represent something altogether different and largely indefensible.   

If you accept that, then the more important issue as relates to Senator Obama is that his continued, official campaign association with Dr. Wright raises serious issues of judgment.  Senator Obama has used his sound judgment as a defense against criticism of inexperience.   I don’t think Obama believes the things Dr.  Wright said, but that doesn’t really matter.  Regardless of any positive attributes Dr.  Wright and his church may also represent, Obama’s official association with Dr. Wright shows a significant lapse in judgment.

A reader writes:

Your quotation of the day for March 15 gave me pause. It is possible to subscribe great and true motives and reasons to mundane, and in reality much less impressive actions. Barack Obama has spent twenty years listening to his pastor’s sermons. He knows who he is, understands his anti-American rhetoric, and remains a member in good standing of the congregation. If one begins with the assumption that Obama’s motives are, no matter what, perfect, or at least impressive, then all of his actions can be justified. But Occam says otherwise. The simplest answer to the question, “Why has Barack Obama remained in his church despite the vile rhetoric of his pastor,” is that Barack Obama accepts that rhetoric, or at least is not sufficiently bothered to go find another church.

We left our synagogue recently, the synagogue at which both of our children were Bnai Mitzvah, and whose previous rabbi officiated at our wedding. Why? Because we did not like the political tone that was being created by the new rabbi. Simple. We chose not to be associated with it! And neither of us is running for President!

I think Occam is largely but not entirely right. The full record of Wright’s oratory is much broader, more complicated and more nuanced than the handful of quotes from a few inflammatory sermons. Obama has explained why he was drawn to this church and why he found its empowerment of many urban African-Americans an important part of his education. My sense is that he saw this ugliness and extremism as well but overlooked it, and understood it as part of the ugliness that pain -especially in the black inner city – sometimes evokes. He can fairly be criticized for not walking out or protesting. And maybe this kind of conditional tolerance of extremism simply will not wash with many white voters. But to say his worldview resonates with the ugliest of Wright’s statements is not borne out by the record.

Steve Chapman doubts any of the presidential candidates know how to handle the economic situation:

They claim they can pay for most of this by raising taxes on the wealthy and ending the war in Iraq. But the first would bring in no more than $100 billion a year or so. And the money we are spending in Iraq is money we don’t have in the first place. It’s like saying, I can’t afford a Hawaiian vacation, so  I’ll take the money I’m not spending on that to buy a Mercedes. The clear implication is that either of the Democrats will finance their proposals the same way President Bush has financed his—by sending the bill to our kids.

For all his stern talk about eradicating earmarks, John McCain would take a similar approach. True, he is much less inclined to launch new initiatives, but he spurns the notion of paying for all the expenses we currently have, much less the ones looming ahead.

He says he would not increase taxes under any circumstances. That would be lovely if McCain were proposing deep cuts in the federal budget to eliminate the growing deficit. In fact, NTUF calculates, his plans would increase federal spending by $7 billion a year.

I’ve told this story before, but the Obama-Wright flap brought it back to my mind. In the early 1990s – I can’t recall exactly when but it was during a showing of the AIDS quilt on the Mall in Washington – I made a visit to the quilt, and visited the memorials for some dead friends. I was grappling with the terror of my own HIV infection, and as the day drew to a close, went to mass. I went just to offer my grief and fear to God, and pray for some guidance. Amazingly that day, the Gospel was about the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, and how only the Samaritan – the social outcast – came back to thank him. It seemed to speak directly in my own heart to my brothers who had fallen in the plague and the sense of social ostracism that had added unforgivably to their fear and pain and loneliness. It spoke to me of Jesus’ ability to transcend all of it through divine love, and of His special love for them, the outsiders.

The priest stood up to give his homily and began with these words (I paraphrase from memory): "These days, we do not have plagues like leprosy, plagues that stigmatize individuals the way the lepers were in today’s Gospel. So we have to think of other diseases, like cancer …" I don’t remember much else, because my anger and shock literally made me shake. I found tears running down my cheeks. At the end of the mass, as I was leaving the church, I went up to the priest and said, with an edge and quaver in my voice: "Have you heard of AIDS, father? It’s in the papers." He replied – and I can still hear him say it today: "I didn’t think that kind of disease would affect anybody here."

It did take me several weeks to go back to church.

And my current period of inconstant mass-going is also laden with these memories and these hurts. But I didn’t renounce the church, and I don’t renounce the church, or even that priest, because I also knew and know that it includes many, many good people, and does many, many good things. I was able to distinguish between a callous homily and other homilies and experiences that outweighed it. No church is defined entirely by its pastor’s worst moments. And I would actually think less of someone’s spiritual integrity if they dumped their church community for purely political reasons. (David Kuo agrees.) Fait is not like a policy check-list; it’s an unending engagement with a community and a set of truths. Any church, moreover, is its membership, all of it. And every Christian community speaks to a larger, eternal community of saints that redeems us even as we falter and even betray the Gospels.

This is not the same as Obama’s tolerance of some ugly political extremism from Wright and decision to focus on the better parts of his pastor’s message and work. And a black pastor’s relationship with his church is different than a priest’s relationship with his. But suffice it to say I understand that faith and church-membership are not always uncomplicated or non-contradictory things. There is much bad among much good. We are answerable for our own choices and our own complexities and conflicts. But we are not always answerable for the views of others, especially at their worst moments, and especially in the life of the flawed, human but necessary church.

The Virginia Quarterly Review does the math.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

My Sunday Times column this week thinks out loud about the accelerating fusion of the web and television:

Already you find print journalists or bloggers switching on a video cam and broadcasting their content live – their own personal television channel. Most online magazines are beginning to generate their own amateurish but classic television chat shows; traditional newsrooms feature online video interviews with their reporters and columnists and send them out to the blogosphere. The share that video is taking of web bandwidth keeps growing exponentially – and may even create traffic jams within a few years’ time.

As so often, this democratisation of production means higher highs and much lower lows. Nutcases and geniuses – thousands who would never in a million years have made it past the professional barriers for old-style TV networks – now broadcast their idiosyncratic monologues to the masses. Hyde Park Corner is no longer a function of mere words-on-pixels. You can now see and hear an opiner opine or watch a conversation unfold. Find yourself someone to interview, set up your video cam and you can have your own show. Just put it on your blog and try to find an audience. Anyone with a modem has their own potential TV channel. It’s just that most people haven’t realised it yet.

Obama will give a major speech tomorrow about Wright and the role of race in the campaign. That’s a good thing.

Drumkeeran, Ireland, 11.32 am.

This window view has appeared before but it’s one of my all-time favorites, and it’s St Patrick’s Day.

A reader writes:

Wright’s speeches condemning the United States for racist policies are an updated (although much less elegant) version of Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Here’s an excerpt:

"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy–a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."

Strong stuff! Comparing the U.S. to "a nation of savages"? Of course, Douglass was condemning an era of slavery, but Wright was referring to just such an inheritance.

And there’s also this:

"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people. ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; songs of Zion. How can we sign the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.’ (Psalm 137.1-6)…Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans?….How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom?"

When will people accept that strongly worded condemnations of the United States
are a fundamental part of our literary tradition–as they should be of any
vibrant democracy?