Monday, March 31, 2008

Jeremiah Vs. the New York Times

When two repellent entities go at it, for whom do you cheer? In this case, maybe a cage match with hand grenades, or flame throwers at ten paces would settle the issue?

Time has reprinted a year-old letter from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright criticizing New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's news story about Barack Obama's disinvitation of Wright from speaking at his candidancy announcement.

The Wright Rant is a tad strange for a couple of reasons.

First, as Captain Ed points out at Hot Air, Ms. Kantor somehow missed the invocations for God to damn America, the roosting of chickens a la Malcom X, and the accusation of a government-created AIDS virus designed to eliminate people of color.

Here's how Kantor deals with those messy issues:
"...the church is also more Afrocentric and politically active than standard black congregations."
Did she just not know about the radical black liberation theology Wright preached, or was she deliberately going easy on him?

The second strange, and rather chilling, aspect of Wright's letter is his preoccupation with Kantor's Jewish roots:
...a man [Obama] who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews...

When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him...

I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana...
I wonder if Jeremiah Wright has ever used the phrase, "Jew York Times," but I don't wonder much.