On 05-02-08, STAN HARDEGREE said to JOHNJWILSON:


JW> Or be honored. Or be given an honorary degree. He hasn't actually been


SH>Yesterday, Northwestern withdrew its offer of an honorary degree for the
SH>pig pastor.  Seems that not everyone on the left is swooning over this
SH>disgraceful piece of garbage.


I was going to post this in Ceppa's echo, but they've gone strangely silent
on the Revrund Wright subject there;



George Will


May 2, 2008


Because John McCain and other legislators worry that they are easily
corrupted, there are legal limits to the monetary contributions that anyone
can make to political candidates. There are, however, no limits to the
rhetorical contributions that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can make to McCain's
campaign.


Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question
arises: Can persons opposed to Barack Obama's candidacy justly make use
of Wright's invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The
answer is: Certainly, because Wright's paranoias tell us something - exactly
what remains to be explored - about his 20-year parishioner.


In yesterday's speech at the National Press Club, Wright repeated -
decorously, by his standards, but clearly - his accusation, made the
Sunday after Sept. 11, that America got what it deserved. His answer
yesterday to a question about that accusation was: "Whatsoever you sow,
that you also shall reap" and "you cannot do terrorism on other people
and expect them never to come back on you."


As evidence that "our government is capable of doing anything," he
strongly hinted that he has intellectually respectable corroboration -
he mentioned several publications - for his original charge that the U.S.
government is guilty of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide
against people of color." But yesterday he insisted that he is not
anti-American: It is, he said, Americans' government, not the American
public, that is a genocidal perpetrator of terrorism. So, he now denies
that America has a representative government - that it represents the
public. He believes that elections constantly and mysteriously - and
against the public's will - produce a genocidal, terroristic
government.


Yesterday, Wright also espoused the racialist doctrine that blacks have
"different" learning styles from others'. This doctrine of racially
different brains, or of an unalterably different black culture, is a
doctrine today used to justify various soft bigotries of low
expectations regarding blacks, and especially black children. It has a long
pedigree as a rationalization for injustices. Slaveholders and, later,
segregationists loved it.


Obama should be questioned about whether he agrees about "different"
learning styles. It is, however, predictable that journalistic and
political choruses will attempt to suppress such questioning by
suggesting that it is somehow illegitimate. The "daisy ad" and "Willie
Horton" will be darkly mentioned.


There have been two television ads in presidential campaigns concerning
which there is a settled consensus of deep disapproval. In both cases,
the consensus about these acts of supposed mischief is mistaken.


The first ad was used in 1964 by Lyndon Johnson against Barry
Goldwater: A small girl plucked petals from a daisy as a voice counted down
to a nuclear explosion. The ad, reflecting Johnson's fear that his large
lead would cause complacency among his supporters, concluded with a voice
saying: "The stakes are too high for you to stay home."


Goldwater and many of his supporters were incensed. But Goldwater had
said several things suggestive of a somewhat cavalier attitude about the use
of force, including nuclear weapons. He had made his judgment a legitimate
issue.


In the spring of 1988, in a debate among candidates for the Democratic
presidential nomination, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore used the matter of
Willie Horton against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, one of Gore's
rivals.


Horton had been in a Massachusetts prison serving a life sentence for
the murder of a boy he stabbed 19 times during a robbery. Horton was
frequently released on weekend furloughs. Finally, he fled, kidnapped a
couple, stabbed the man and repeatedly raped the woman. Because the ad,
made by supporters of Vice President George Bush, included a photo of
Horton, critics called it racist. But supporters of Bush argued that
the Horton episode was emblematic of Massachusetts' political culture, or
of a liberal mentality, pertinent to assessing Dukakis.


When North Carolina Republicans recently ran an ad featuring Wright in
full cry, McCain mounted his high horse, from which he rarely
dismounts, and demanded that the ad be withdrawn. The North Carolinians
properly refused. Wright is relevant.


He is a demagogue with whom Obama has had a voluntary 20-year
relationship. It has involved, if not moral approval, certainly no
serious disapproval. Wright also is an ongoing fountain of anti-American and,
properly understood, anti-black rubbish. His speech yesterday
demonstrated that he wants to be a central figure in this presidential
campaign. He should be.




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*Durango b301 #PE*