Below The Beltway

Jeremiah Wright continued his strange media tour last night with a speech before the NAACP in Dallas:

Speaking in Detroit, at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s 53rd annual “Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner,” Rev. Jeremiah Wright took on his critics even while he spoke of a new, unified day coming.

(…)

Addressing a local Republican official who’d called Wright “divisive,” Wright told the welcoming crowd in his keynote address, “I am not one of the most ‘divisive.’ Tell him the word is ‘descriptive.’ I describe the conditions in this country — conditions divide, not my description.”

Wright’s appearance guaranteed more media attention for the former pastor of the Democratic president frontrunner, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, who likely had hoped the issue — and Wright — would go away. In more news that would no doubt trouble Obama, Wright mentioned that he was working on a book.

“I’m not here for political reasons,” Wright said. “I’m not a politician.” He said that might surprise in the crowd of 10,000 since “many in the corporate-owned media have made it seem that I’m running for the Oval Office. I am not running for the Oval Office; I’ve been running for Jesus for a long, long time, and I’m not tired yet.”

Most of Wright’s speech addressed the theme of the dinner, “A Change is Gonna Come,” talking about the differences between different cultures and races, saying “a change is coming because we no longer see others as being deficient…Different doesn’t mean deficient.”

“The black religious tradition is different,” he said in comments that seemed to address the controversy about his sermons. “We do it a different way.”

Wright discussed how different groups have seen other groups as “deficient.” After saying English-speakers saw Arabic-speakers as “being deficient,” Wright mentioned Obama almost as an aside.

“Please run and tell my stuck-on-stupid friends that Arabic is a language — is a language, it is not a religion,” he said. “Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator’s middle name dramatically, “Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it’s some disease.”

Howard Kurtz compares the re-emergence of Wright with a root canal:

Barack Obama needed this like he needed a root canal.

Just when the Jeremiah Wright furor seemed to be dying down, the ex-pastor is back and suddenly inescapable. On the tube with Bill Moyers. Speaking to the NAACP. Showing up Monday at the National Press Club.

There it was yesterday, that endless loop of Wright shouting “God damn America” over and over. Yet another opportunity to talk about how he thinks the US of KKK-A created the AIDS virus to kill blacks.

This is rather amazing. At great political risk to himself, Obama refused to disavow Wright even as he tried to distance himself from the reverend’s more inflammatory rhetoric. Wright might have repaid the favor to the man whose wedding he handled by laying low, at least until November.

Instead, Wright is mounting a media blitz that he has to know–has to know–is going to damage the most famous member of his former church. No matter how reasonable he sounds, he just reignites the controversy and throws his friend under the bus. This issue will be around until November if Obama gets the nomination, no question about it. Charlie Gibson led with it on “World News.”

And Mark Daniels, a Lutheran Pastor himself, offers this comment:

To me, the Wright story has always been more complicated than the sound bites or the editorial cartoons conveyed. In looking at some of Wright’s pronouncements and in heeding some who know him well, I’ve concluded that he is a basically solid Christian minister who nonetheless adheres to some reprehensible, indefensible ideas. When he is prophetic, as he can be in the most positive Biblical sense, he nonetheless also displays an allegiance to notions that are in turn, kooky, dangerous, or bigoted.

It appears that Wright is so bent on “clarifying” himself that he can’t or won’t defer addressing what he regards as unfair assaults on his character and his message until the election is over.

The results could be the scuttling of both his own reputation and the election of his former parishioner to the presidency.

His desire to speak out is, I suppose, understandable. His timing is horrible.

Horrible from who’s perspective, though ? Horrible for Obama, yes, but, let’s face it, Jeremiah Wright is a household name right now because of his connection to a man who could be the next President. It seems to me that he’s exploiting that attention for all it’s worth right now.