The Parasitic Meme

The behavior of the mainstream CNN/FOX/ABC/CBS/(MS)NBC media in declaring Jeremiah Wright’s words “important” or “relevant” to Obama’s candidacy seems incorrect to me. The assertions themselves invoke association fallacy which a college sophomore should recognize as completely unreasonable demagoguery, though in my own cynicism, I wonder if such students can actually name the two or three kinds of logical fallacy present in the case they propagated.

If CNN et al hadn’t run the story, I would simply have not been aware of it, except in the abstract sense that Black preachers often wax political from the pulpit, which is something my own religion tries not to do.

They weren’t at all behaving like ideal journalists by relentlessly and continuously playing only snippets of those Trinity sermons, out of their context, all while pretending to only cover the controversy. In my opinion, they fomented it, and held controversy open.

Obama was correct, and utterly Christian, in condemning a sin of expressing hateful frustration while keeping a metaphorical arm around the so-called sinner.

But honestly: What else are we supposed to expect from a Boomer-era Black preacher, after a lifetime of civil struggle against a firehose-strength stream of resistance to any social change that would bring parity to his and his parishoner’s families. Just parity!

On certain grounds, I refuse to fault Wright for getting excitable about American social injustices, except insofar as the fact that that kind of rhetoric is no longer needed to sway “White” kids, anymore. And the fact that he played right into the hands of media congloms whose leaders care only about the number of eyes looking at the screen when the ads play.

Can we really fault Wright for framing those ideas in classic Preacher-fire’n'brimstone, when given in a religious context? Good grief! The entirety of American religion, including the so-called secularisms, promise precisely the same things, even if they name different causes for them.

For example, does it really differ in kind from the sorts of left- and right-wing claims I’ve heard made about why 9/11 happened (remember Falwell’s words?), or why a hurricane precipitated the drowning of New Orleans. Or, for that matter, much of what Ward Churchill had to say a few years ago about why radical Islamicists have targeted the U.S.?

(Now, note here, please, that I don’t actually agree with Churchill, or Falwell, or anyone else who supposes that “sin” is the direct immediate cause of calamity. Look in your Bible: the rain falls on the just and the unjust, etc.)

Or for that matter, certain softer promises made in Mormon scripture, about the conditions required to “prosper in the land the Lord giveth you.” Or the prediction, without a timetable, in Mormonism’s “Proclamation on the Family” that the “calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets” are the destiny of societies which don’t heave-to and conform to traditional family norms and roles?

So it’s with that background that I’d claim that as an ostensible Obama supporter (having voted to pledge delegates to him in a precinct caucus), I didn’t actually need that speech he gave to recognize the cynical treatment his friends were getting at the hands of a willfully excitable press. I’m far more upset with CNN than I am with Reverend Wright, whose energy on the subject is no less than I might apply, after decades of watching family and friends suffer in a regime where only lip service has been given to Constitutional ideal.

I hope to meet him someday, perhaps to shake his hand and attempt a sliver of empathy towards him and the life he led.