David McReynolds
LEFT LETTERS

29 April 2008

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.