Bill Moyers on Hypocrisy of Obama’s Wright Controversy

Bill Moyers nails it and locks it down. Here’s some of the good stuff:

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions, or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of a preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon white house in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy and wrong — white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.

Let’s see if the mainsteam media covers this Bill Moyers show. Read the whole thing on Bill Moyers Journal.

I also want to call your attention to an interview with Jonathan Walton on Salon.com about Obama’s Wright controversy–its a very clear description of how some political operatives are using Wright to align Obama with the trope of the angry black man:

It’s about balkanizing and browning Obama’s post-racial body. He presents himself as the post-racial candidate, and this is a way to racialize him, to derail the mythology of this post-racial, post-political messianic figure. How do they do that? By presenting and packaging him in a way where he becomes the black or brown body that “mainstream America” is familiar with, yet is still largely scared of. He’s aligned with the angry black man Jeremiah Wright.

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