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By Leonard Pitts Jr.My cousin thinks Jeremiah Wright walks on water.

He is a minister, my cousin, and for years, whenever I’ve visited him in Chicago, he has asked the same question: have I ever attended one of the Rev. Wright’s services? When I said no, he would lecture me on the wonderfulness of Wright, the innovative ministries he has started, the liberation theology he preaches. I owed it to myself, my cousin would say, to hear him speak.

Well, I’ve heard him. Call me unimpressed.

Wright, as everyone this side of the Kuskokwim River knows, re-emerged in a big way recently. Having gone into seclusion after inflammatory soundbites from his sermons forced his one-time parishioner, presidential candidate Barack Obama, to make a high-stakes speech on race in Philadelphia, the longtime pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ came out to plead his own case.

He started strong in an interview with Bill Moyers, went quickly downhill with a keynote address before the NAACP in Detroit, and crashed with an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington. Indeed, while some white observers, charmingly eager to pretend they are victims of oppression, have contended for months that Wright’s most striking sin is racism, this media blitz argues convincingly that Wright’s signature failing is something else entirely: clownishness. With arrogance running a close second.

Not to deny Wright’s affinity for the racially charged soundbite. His refusal to disavow the old AIDS-was-created-by-the-government-to-kill-black-people canard was disappointing, to say the least, playing as it does into an unfortunate streak of paranoia and conspiracy theorizing that runs deep in the black community.

Similarly, his defense of Louis Farrakhan against charges of anti-Semitism — that it’s unfair to hold the Nation of Islam leader accountable for things he said 20 years ago — is singularly weak. Until and unless Farrakhan apologizes for and repents of his years of Jew-baiting, it is entirely fair and, indeed, entirely necessary, for people of whatever religion, race or culture who believe in human equality to denounce him, all his good works notwithstanding. If you condemn bigotry when it is turned against people like you, but tolerate it when people like you turn it against someone else, you forfeit all claim to the moral high ground. You are a hypocrite acting only from narrow self-interest.

For all that, though, the thing about Wright’s lost weekend that stands out most for me is his demeanor in the two speeches he gave: smug, mugging for the cameras, signifying, jive talking, acting the fool. Did he really say an attack on him was an attack on the black church entire? Did he really make those faces and throw that silly salute? Why didn’t he just slap his hands together, yell “Dy-no-mite!” and be done with it? Wright came across like drunken Uncle Buddy at the Thanksgiving table, the one who doesn’t know he’s not funny and won’t shut up.

More to the point, he did not come across like a reverend. Or even a Christian.

The heck of it is, he had insightful things to say about culture, about difference, about reconciliation. But the messenger killed the message.

It was bad enough that Obama was finally forced to sever ties with him. Bad enough that conspiracy theorists wondered aloud whether Hillary Clinton had a hand in setting up the speeches. Which is crazy, but you understand where it’s coming from. Wright is this year’s Willie Horton. Except that where Willie Horton was made by George H.W. Bush, Wright made himself.

He had his chance to walk on water but — sorry, cousin — he fell in instead. The only remaining question is whether he will pull Barack Obama down with him.

By Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds
Reynolds News Service
Without the prophetic, bold voices and organizing ability of leaders like Pastor Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago there would be no U.S. Senator Barack Obama with a decent chance at becoming the first black president of the United States.

And it is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray the Senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement instead of respecting Wright for the towering astute father of progressive social and global causes that he is.
For 20 years, Rev. Wright has been a ” friend, mentor and pastor.” This is how Sen. Obama described him in a letter dated February 5, 2007.

In that letter, the senator wrote “I constantly remember Rev. Wright as the shepherd who guided me to my commitment to Christ one Sunday morning at Trinity. I often consider, as I work in the Senate how he lives his life—a life of service to Trinity, Chicago and the nation; his activism on behalf of causes that few would champion and his dogged commitment to the first principles of love for God and fellow man. And in my personal walk, I seek daily to imitate his faith.”

Pastor Jeremiah Wright is no weird, anti-American hater and separatist cult leader. He loved his country enough to serve in the U.S. Marines. His denomination, the United Church of Christ, is a 90 percent white denomination. As a pastor, Wright married the Obamas, baptized their children, and a Wright sermon provided the title of Obama’s best-selling book “The Audacity of Hope.”
The Jeremiah I know is a sought-after preacher in seminaries across the country. I have traveled with him, introduced him at the National Press Club and use his tapes as teaching tools in my prophetic ministry classes at the Howard University School of Divinity, where he often preaches to adoring audiences.

I am inspired by Wright’s leadership as the founding father of the Samuel D. Proctor conference, which is directed by Dr. Iva Carruthers, a Trinity member. The Conference is the progressive wing of the Black Church and represents some 50 million people through an ecumenical cross section of clergy and inter-faith leaders across the nation.
When black and poor people were devastated by the double tragedies of Katrina and governmental indifference, the Conference impaneled a commission of citizen activists to investigate. They authored a report, “The Breach,” which documented the governmental abuses, and solutions. The Conference is still working with Katrina victims, while so many others have deserted them. Both Senators Hillary Clinton and Obama worked with this effort.

Pastor Wright is being brutally trashed for his controversial sermons. The mainstream media are the guilty culprit in all of this partly because of ignorance of the historic role of the Black Church, which was born out of the crucible of slavery, lynching and Jim Crow, If those injustices had not been raised with passion, blacks would still be on the plantation, a point that Trinity’s new pastor Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, nicely raised in an interview on CNN.

Secondly, Pastor Wright seems so radical because so many churches aren’t saying anything. Instead of preaching and organizing against the unjust war in Iraq that has claimed more than 4,000 U.S. lives and 30,000 Iranian lives, the cradle to grave prison industrial pipeline, inadequate education, and other social ills, so many mega-church leaders are hooping about prosperity and allowing politicians drive through photo ops in their churches without holding their feet to the fire.

Wright stands out because so many others are sitting down. There are not many churches where the social gospel of Dr. King is preached. The media have watered down the volumes of King’s sermonic contributions to “I have a Dream,” although King spoke out strongly against such issues as the Vietnam War just as Wright is campaigning against the horrors of the ill-fated war in Iraq today.
In his letter from a Birmingham jail, King excoriated the comfortable positions of white moderates. “Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates before it can be cured.” Wright exposes injustice in much the same way.

Wright is much more than a Sunday morning wonder. He had launched more than 70 active ministries that provide housing complexes for senior citizens, day care for children, ministries for people living with HIV and help for families of the incarcerated.
Whether you disagree or agree with Wright’s controversial statements it is a terrible disservice to ignore his contributions as a theologian, pastor, and educator. It is ludicrous that a pastor who has preached more than 207,000 minutes for the past 36 years at Trinity on Sunday, not to mention his weekday worship services, revivals and global preaching, should be judged by a couple of 15 or 30 second sound bytes.

Furthermore, Pastor Rod Parsley of Columbus, Ohio, who is a spiritual adviser to Republican front-runner John McCain, has made ugly comments about destroying “the false religion of Islam” at a time when American- born Muslims are fighting for the United States in Iraq. Somehow this hate speech doesn’t provoke outrage.
While Sen. Obama may have to distance himself from his pastor to play the game of politics, it is unwise for any of us to burn the bridges that brought us across.

ABC News’ Nitya Venkataraman Reports: In a Tuesday appearance on Good Morning America, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., suggested that controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright is angry with parishioner Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and may be deliberately trying to hurt his presidential bid. Saying that Wright “went out of his way to weaken Obama” during Monday’s address at the National Press Club, Gingrich told Barbara Walters “I think Reverend Wright has a greater interest in his self-importance.”

MORE HERE IF YOU CARE, but why bother I SAID THIS DAYS AGO!!!

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn’t have done more damage to Barack Obama’s campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that’s just what one friend of Wright wanted.Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.

A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).

It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club “who organized” the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: “My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you” to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

The same post criticized Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” theme: “Hope by definition is not based on facts,” wrote Reynolds. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time.”

In another blog entry, Reynolds gives an ever-sharper critique of Obama: “It is a sad testimony that to protect his credentials as a unifier above the fray, the senator is fueling the media characterization that Rev. Dr. Wright is some retiring old uncle in the church basement.”

I don’t know if Reynolds’ eagerness to help Wright stage a disastrous news conference with the national media was a way of trying to help Clinton - my queries to Reynolds by phone and e-mail weren’t returned yesterday - but it’s safe to say she didn’t see any conflict between promoting Wright and supporting Clinton.

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad the actual news conference was. Wright, steeped in an honorable, fiery tradition of Bible-based social criticism, cheapened his arguments and his movement by mugging for the cameras, rolling his eyes, heaping scorn on his critics and acting as if nobody in the room was learned enough to ask him a question.

Wright has, unquestionably, been caricatured and vilified unfairly. The feeding programs, prison outreach and other social services he has built over more than 30 years are commendable, and his reading of the Judeo-Christian tradition as an epic story of people trying to escape slavery is far more right than wrong - and not something to be caricatured or compressed into a 10-second sound bite.

But Wright should have known - and his friend and ally Reynolds, a media professional, surely knew - that bickering with the press can only harm Wright and, by extension, Obama.

I hope that wasn’t their goal.

(Story Link) In his first wide-ranging interview since video clips of his inflammatory sermons were aired, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. defended himself over the controversy, saying that his words were twisted.
Mr. Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor, gave an interview to Bill Moyers on Wednesday, to air on PBS tomorrow.“I felt it was unfair,” Mr. Wright said, according to excerpts of the interview released Thursday. “I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.”
In Mr. Wright’s sermons, he suggested that Americans bore some responsibility for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” He also blamed the government for the spread of AIDS among African-Americans, characterized the United States government as corrupt and referred to the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.”
He did not apologize or back away from his remarks in the interview, instead saying that people wanted to paint him as “some sort of fanatic.”

“It’s to paint me as something — ‘Something’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with this country … for its policies. We’re perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them,’” he said. “That’s not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.”
When asked what the people who aired the clips “wanted to communicate,” Mr. Wright said, “I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That’s what they wanted to communicate.”
Mr. Wright, who has acted as Mr. Obama’s spiritual mentor and retired in February as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said that he has never heard Mr. Obama repeat any of his controversial statements.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Wright said. “I don’t talk to him about politics. And so he had a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the things of God.”
Mr. Obama publicly denounced Mr. Wright’s remarks, a reaction Mr. Wright said “went down very simply.”
“He’s a politician, I’m a pastor,” he said. “We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they’re two different worlds.”
He added, “I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician.”