Community | September 20, 2011 | 12 comments

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace

source: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_rev_jeremiah_wright_recalls_obamas_fall_from_grace_2...

Image
Anonmaly
Barack Obama’s politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, playing the part of Judas, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity. He became nothing more than a pawn of power, or as Cornel West says, “a black mascot for Wall Street.” Obama, once the glitter of power fades, will have to grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered—his soul.

The health of a nation is measured by how it treats its prophets. When these prophets are ignored and reviled, when they become figures of ridicule, when they are labeled by the chattering classes and power elite as fools, then there is no check left on moral decay and the degeneration of the state. Wright, who spent 36 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side, since the 2008 presidential campaign has endured slander and calumny and weathered character assassination, misinterpretation and abuse, and yet he doggedly continues Sunday after Sunday to thunder the word of God from pulpits across the country.

I grew up as a Christian. My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans, from T.D. Jakes to Joel Osteen. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright’s presence.

***********Obama, although his subservience to the war machine and Wall Street mocks the fundamental values of Dr. Martin Luther King, will preside Oct. 16 over the dedication of the King memorial on the Mall in Washington. He will lend himself to the venal cabal of the corporate and political elites who have hijacked King’s image. These political and corporate figures—many of whom donated significant sums to build the $120 million memorial (General Motors, which gave $10 million, uses the memorial in a commercial for its vehicles)—seek to silence King’s demand for economic justice and an end to racism and militarism. King’s vision is grotesquely deformed in Obama’s hands. To hear the voice of King we will have to turn from the choreographed and corporate-sponsored dedication ceremony to heed the words of a handful of men and women who are as reviled by the power brokers as King was in his own life, and yet who battle to keep the flame of King’s message alive.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing that the country would recognize someone as important as Dr. King,” Wright said when I reached him by phone in Chicago, “and recognize him in a way that raises his likeness in the Mall along with the presidents. He’s not a president like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. But to have him ranked among them in terms of this nation paying attention to the importance of his work, that’s a good thing.”

“I read Maya Angelou’s piece about the way the quote was put on the monument,” Wright said in referring to the editing of a quote by King on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue. The inscription quote reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” But these are not King’s words. They are paraphrased from a sermon he gave in which he said: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Angelou said the mangled inscription made King sound “arrogant.”*******

“I read the explanation as to why we couldn’t include the whole quote,” said Wright, who helped raise $200,000 for the monument. “Kids a hundred years from now, like our pastor who was born three years after King was killed, they’re going to see that and will not get the context. They will not hear the whole speech, and that will be their take-away, which is not a good thing. My bigger problems, however, have to do with all the emphasis on ’63 and ‘I Have a Dream.’ They have swept under the rug the radical justice message that King ended his career repeating over and over and over again, starting with the media coverage of the April 4, 1967, ‘A Time to Break Silence’ message at the Riverside Church [in New York City]. King had a huge emphasis on capitalism, militarism and racism, the three-headed giant. There is no mention of that, no mention of that King, and absolutely no mention of the importance of his work with the poor. After all, he’s at the garbage collectors strike in Memphis, Tenn., when he is assassinated. The whole emphasis on the poor sent him to Memphis. But that gets swept away. It bothers me that we think more about a monument than a movement. He had a movement trying to address poverty. It was for jobs, not I Have a Dream, not Black and White Together, but that gets lost.”

“You look at old guys like me that were alive during that time,” Wright said. “I’m saying ‘wait a minute, you’re missing something, you’re missing something,’ and my grandson—well, my youngest one is 11, he’ll not know that King. I’ll tell him, but what’s going to happen in terms of the curriculum? What’s going to happen in terms of the schools? What’s going to happen in terms of the millions of visitors who go to Washington, D.C.? They will miss that King entirely. We have an idealistic portrait. I think that does violence to what the man stood for and what he was trying to do.”

More ominously, Wright warns, the sanitizing of King has been accompanied by the primacy of a selfish, hedonistic and violent culture which has turned away from values, including self-sacrifice, that make possible harmony and the common good. This selfishness and narcissism, Wright argues, is a form of blasphemy.

(much more @ link)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_rev_jeremiah_wright_recalls_obamas_fall_...
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Politics,   Culture,   3 more
  2. tags:
    Obama,  Racist,  playing the race card,  loyalty,  2 more
  3.     
    |

12 comments // The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace

  • OlBlue
    • +1
      OlBlue  

    • Okay, Obama sold out. With the political system we have today, no one can get the cash and backing to run and be elected to higher office unless they sell their souls. Let's not blame the man. Blame the system. Ron Paul is a good example. He may be the least "sellout" of the candidates, including Obama, but he's probably the least electable because of it. NOTE: I AM NOT SUPPORTING RON PAUL SO DON'T JUMP ON ME FOR MENTIONING HIM.

    • 8 months ago
  • remanns
  • percipi224
    • 0
      percipi224  

    • Wow! This was very good. And to add; perhaps Pres. Obama; after going through "shadow" will return to himself and become that man we all voted for, the man whose book I read. Let's hope it's before he is out of office and he can stop picking around the edges and realy fight the fight he truly hungers for. Just as an aside. I worked as a therapist in a nursing home where a gentlemen with alzheimers lived. He was a person of note in the mennonite church in Canada. One day he stopped me and asked me why I was there. When I explained I was the therapist, he repeated his question more intently. He told me I was "here" to do something important and that Jesus was a rebel. There would have been no Jesus if he hadn't been a rebel. dear man. Wright reminded me of that encounter.

    • 8 months ago
  • Schnookums
    • +2
      Schnookums  

    • King's work on economic justice was his most important contribution to society, despite it being the one he was able to put the least amount of direct effort into. His life was snubbed out just as he was about to turn his full attention to it, even in the face of serious doubts from within his own ranks that he could be successful.

      In many ways, I view this as being his primary focus in life. I have often wondered if his fight for racial equality was simply a mask to get people on board. Not that he didn't believe in racial equality, but rather he saw it in the broader context of economic equality. To me his actions speak louder than even his words, but in the end, I guess we'll never know.

    • 8 months ago
  • remanns
  • Schnookums
  • Progresshiv
    • +3
      Progresshiv  

    • How long before the Disney version of Dr. King appears as an action figure in toy stores? Push the button on his belly and hear a sanitized misquote.

    • 8 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  

    • Just so you know all those people out there, willing to push, and support Obama like he can do no wrong, and he's beyond questioning... You're just as bad as the republicans... And unless you have a serious vested interest it makes no sense, the difference in policy between the two options is next to none (unless you count Ron Paul who is against the racist drug war, and wants to audit the Federal Reserve, and wants to end these mentally deficient wars, and put an end to the "police state", and the rest of this ever escalating fascist shit hole... just sayin)...

      (& yeah people should be able to question their leaders on a valid basis, with relative impunity... It's not like my decisions effect the whole world, causing the occasional drone strike to kill babies...)

      They don't support us, not one candidate, Cornell West is right Obama is essentially; "Putting 'black-face' on Wall-Street".....

    • 8 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • 0
      Anonmaly  

    • "Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand.

      “President Obama was selected before he was elected,” Wright said, “and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn’t select him. We don’t have enough money to select anybody. You’re accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. Given those constraints, he is doing the best he can because he is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people. I’ll never forget one of the most powerful things he said to me in my home, second Saturday in April 2008. He said, ‘You know what your problem is?’ I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem. That’s a good problem.’ ” "

    • 8 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  

    • Oh-No... We're so afraid of the 'rethuglicans' we won't even hold Obama accountable.... Going to help misrepresent history to countless future generations? Not only that misrepresent the history of Dr. King.... But it's Obama, so it's okay...

      That's what pisses me off around here... Let him act however as long as he gets reelected... And of course everyone who believes in standards, yeah we're just supporting the enemy....

      I won't call out anyone particular but it's a few people here, you know you're doing it... All day long sining the praises of Obama, attacking relentlessly with no basis anyone who dares to say; "Hey he's full of shit too..."

      no but that's class people.... who cares if your president has integrity right?

    • 8 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  

    • "“I read the explanation as to why we couldn’t include the whole quote,” said Wright, who helped raise $200,000 for the monument. “Kids a hundred years from now, like our pastor who was born three years after King was killed, they’re going to see that and will not get the context. They will not hear the whole speech, and that will be their take-away, which is not a good thing. My bigger problems, however, have to do with all the emphasis on ’63 and ‘I Have a Dream.’ They have swept under the rug the radical justice message that King ended his career repeating over and over and over again, starting with the media coverage of the April 4, 1967, ‘A Time to Break Silence’ message at the Riverside Church [in New York City]. King had a huge emphasis on capitalism, militarism and racism, the three-headed giant. There is no mention of that, no mention of that King, and absolutely no mention of the importance of his work with the poor."

      (Obama is fake, but you guys go ahead and twist it on me, much like he's helping twist things on really important people..)

    • 8 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  

    • How could Obama just turn on his "spiritual advisor" of many years in the blink of an eye, over the scrutiny of dumb-asses?

      Why does Cornell West dislike him? What about Cynthia McKinney? what about allot of liberal progressive people of all ethnicities that don't agree with Obama's hypocrisy and ability to just abandon people and causes...

      And the author, quite a progressive liberal... With enough courage to be arrested multiple times in protest of bullshit, enough bravery and integrity to call Obama on his b.s., not just sweep it under the rug because he's afraid of rethuglicans....

    • 8 months ago
more from Community:
from the community

top videos