David
McReynolds
LEFT LETTERS
2008 April 29
After
Listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club
David
McReynolds was on the staff of the War Resisters League for many
years, and, as the Socialist Party candidate in 1980 and 2000, the
first openly gay person to run for the U.S. presidency. He lives with
two cats on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
I've
just finished listening to the speech of Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the
National Press Club, carried on MSNBC - all 48 minutes including
questions and answers. Earlier I had been catching the general drift
of things from CNN and MSNBC cable news and felt I needed to watch
the actual event.
Let me say, first, that the prepared remarks
on the Black Church by Rev. Wright were thoughtfully worked out,
informative, and on target. Those remarks included things I had not
thought about, or had not thought about carefully enough.
Any
of the media attacks on Rev. Wright for the first half of the event
were a reaction to painful home truths. He was, at times, saying some
of the things we might wish McCain, or Clinton, or Obama would say.
But of course, it is fairly easy (and safe) to "speak truth to
power" if you have no immediate hope of gaining power. In fact,
for many of us, the speaking of truth is the best we can hope for.
It was, however, in the second half, which was a question and
answer period, when I asked myself what the late Bayard Rustin, A.
Philip Randolph, or Martin Luther King Jr. might have done in a
similar situation, for this is where Rev. Wright misjudged the
situation or, perhaps, judged it well enough but didn't care about
his impact.
He referred to the Black cultural practice of
playing the dozens, and he was "playing the dozens" with
the media, and with white America. (Which, God knows, needs to hear
the message, but will not get it in that form). Because, and here I
fault Rev. Wright deeply, there is a "half-white / half-black"
man who just might get the Democratic nomination for President, and
might just win the election. In American terms, to be half white and
half black is to be all black. And for such a man to be elected
President would be a remarkable thing. This is a momentous time
politically, and Rev. Wright blew it, and has damaged the Obama
campaign seriously.
Whether or not the New York Times will
carry the transcript I don't know, and I don't know how long the full
48 minutes will be available on the MSNBC internet link. But where
Rev. Wright was serious and thoughtful in the first half of his
remarks, in the second half, where he was responding to questions, he
was almost hopping around at the podium, playing to the audience
(which was largely black). It is easy - but very dangerous - when
things as momentous to all of us are involved - particularly to the
African American community - to "play to the crowd at hand"
instead of seeing and understanding the larger, vaster crowd "out
there".
And that crowd he lost. Where he was sober and
prophetic in the first half, in the second half, while he was still
very much on target (the man can think on his feet), he was "playing
the dozens" with the media.
Rev. Wright said things about
American policy which none of the candidates dare to say. Which of
the candidates will speak frankly of the horror of the current war as
it affects the people of Iraq? Who will speak with compassion about
the Palestinians? Who will talk of the need to use our funds for food
at home and abroad instead of weapons? Not Clinton, not Obama, not
McCain. It was refreshing to hear those things said in candor.
What
was tragic - and the reason both Clinton and McCain will be rejoicing
tonight - is that Rev. Wright may have sunk the Obama campaign. He
may indeed have launched us into a dialogue of race, not at the level
where it is needed, but at the most divisive level. And this less
because of the words he used, than because of his tone, his
mannerisms on the stage.
He scored points that needed to be
scored, but in a way that will not be heard by white Americans. (On
the matter of Louis Farrakhan, where the mainstream media wants a
clear denunciation, he was quite correct to say that Farrakhan plays
an important role in the African American community, that nothing is
accomplished by denunciations, and more is accomplished by dialogue
-- but the way in which he said this left him standing in Farrakhan's
shadow).
So the Rev. Wright we all heard on the Bill Moyers'
show, where the dialogue was solid and the hour well spent, was not
the Rev. Wright who spoke to the National Press Club. He has done
extraordinary harm to the Obama campaign, and one wonders if, bitter
at Obama's efforts to gently distance himself from that inflammatory
20 second sound bite, he was trying to even the score.
If so,
it is the nation that suffers, as well as the Obama campaign. Rev.
Wright moved, in the space of those 48 minutes, from being a
prophetic voice of the Black Church to being a serious problem in the
contemporary political scene.
David
was Socialist Party nominee (write-in) for Congress, 1958. Peace &
Freedom Party nominee for Congress, 1968. Socialist Party nominee for
President, 1980 and the Green Party candidate for Senate in New York
in 2004. National Co-Chair, Socialist Party, two terms. National
Committeeman, Socialist Party. Arrested over a dozen times for
participation in peace, civil rights, and labor demonstrations.