EJ Dionne on Wright (and Falwell)

"To condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races." - Senator Barack Obama, March 2008

I made a conscious decision several months ago to avoid election coverage as much as possible, at least until the Democratic nomination is settled. Nothing turns me off like vicious mud-slinging, and it would be great to still like the eventual nominee when November rolls around. That said, the vitriol surrounding Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright has been bugging me for some time - other prominent politicians have had just as close ties to religious zealots of all stripes without anywhere near the level of condemnation - why is that?

E. J. Dionne's column in the WaPo today asked - Do white right-wing preachers have it easier than black left-wing preachers? Is there a double standard?

I think it's pretty clear that there is - the real question is why. In politics as in life, you have to watch who you offend. The departed Jerry Faldwell and the like take shots at gays, unwed mothers, religious minorities (including atheists, agnostics and secularists), undocumented immigrants and others who are either lack political influence or were unlikely to support them in the first place. As Dionne points out, it's also more acceptable to criticize behavior depicted as an individual choice than to criticize the structure of American or global society.

Despite efforts in recent decades to shed light of the contributions of people other than white, Christian, heterosexual men to American history, the "default" American citizen in our collective psyche is still a white, Christian, straight man. The fact that "white men" being discussed as a distinct demographic in the democratic primary is a step in the right direction, but the fact remains that people who fit that description face less scrutiny than the rest of us. Hillary Clinton's candidacy has been replete with misogynist double-standards (remember the choked-up incident? the senate floor cleavage? rush limbaugh's shameful comments about "america not wanting to watch a woman age for four years" ? do i need to go on?), I'm slightly surprised that it took this long for Obama to be the target of something similar.

Charles Krauthamer's piece accuses Obama of "playing on white guilt" by having "the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright's remarks" (what Obama actually said: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life"). Ironically, Krauthamer's rant only serves to support Obama's point: "maintream America" doesn't know nearly as much about the lives, thoughts and experiences of their compatriots as they think they do.

How many anti-immigration advocates could describe the dire conditions that drive mothers and fathers to cross the Rio Grande? How many pro-lifers have been scared teenagers themselves? Why isn't the lack of decent maternity leave and affordable, quality child-care the hot-button political issue that it should be?

I don't agree with Wright. However, there are lots of people in this country and around the world who do think that HIV was created by the US government and released in Africa, either on purpose or by accident, and probably even more who think 9/11 was caused by American terrorism (that, of course, depends on your defnition of terrorism - more on that later). There are also lots of people who think 9/11 was perpetrated by the US government to justify launching a war on terror, or by a global conspiracy of Jewish bankers. There are all sorts of crazy theories out there about everything (creationism? geocentrism? trickle-down economics? my dad's theory that Sarkozy is a Scientologist?), but I don't think censorship (including censorship by punditry) is the right way or the American way to deal with controversy, as daft as some people's ideas may seem.

Finally, lots of seemingly insane theories turn out to be right, and if the choice is between blanket condemnation of non-mainstream ideas (like Krauthamer seems to propose) or accepting a greater diversity of public discourse, I think that's a n o-brainer. What would Western culture be without the Copernican Revolution? Of course, there's always the radical possibility of trying to understand where Wright & Co. come from and how they arrived at their conclusions.