Throwing in the towel on Wright halted Obama slide
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Whether it was luck, fate, clever politics or all of the above, Reverend Jeremiah Wright getting a national forum two weeks ago to explain himself was the best thing that could have happened to Barack Obama.
It probably saved his until then imploding campaign, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s overwhelming win over Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and the narrowing of an expected loss in Indiana.
Wright didn’t really say anything in speeches to the NAACP convention in Detroit or to the National Press Club in Washington that they, or we, hadn’t heard before.
But getting Wright’s wackiness out there to a national audience from the Black Liberationist minister’s own lips gave Obama the push to stop apologizing for Wright, and the political peg to disown him.
It was walk the walk time for Obama! That, or he could continue to carry the albatross of having countenanced 20 years of Wright’s racist diatribes on to the Democratic National Convention in August.
In effect, for the two weeks leading up to North Carolina and Indiana, Obama got the bonus of getting to run against a new opponent – the bigotries of Reverend Wright.
The decision to let Minister Wright anywhere near a microphone two weeks before a critical election on the surface makes no sense, coming from two groups invested in seeing Obama become the nation’s first black president.
Why would the NAACP, a group representing African-Americans, 92 percent of whom support Obama, want to provide a platform for a supposed egomaniac said to have the power to bring Obama down?
It has to be noted at this point that if Wright really wanted to kill Obama politically, he would simply urge his Black Liberationist sympathizers in primary states to stay home on election day. We hope there aren’t that many of them, but 15 percent would have turned the trick in North Carolina.
Wright’s pop up appearance at the National Press Club carries its own questions. The organization representing the press and broadcast media isn’t as pro-Obama as the NAACP, but its members are overtly pro-Democrat, if polls over many years can be believed. Also, judging by the liberal media frenzy and outlets such as NBC, MSNBC and the New York Times, this is the Year of Obama.
Still, somebody in the National Press Club hierarchy had to sign off on allowing such a prestige forum in the nation’s capital for a certifiable anti-white, racist bigot to plead his case.
Someday, a behind the scenes explanation will probably sort all this out. Obama might simply be lucky. Or clever tactics arranged by the Obama campaign could figure in, a Bill Clinton Sister Souljah moment brought up to date for Obama.
This writer will be first in line to buy the book.
May 2008
