Jeremiah Wright On Bill Moyers

The conventional wisdom is that the more people see of Jeremiah Wright the worse it is for Barack Obama, so he should just go away to help his candidacy. That’s why many people were saying his interview on PBS with Bill Moyers was a mistake. But I’m not so sure. After seeing the interview for myself (it’s online at PBS.org, click here) I actually think it may help.

Why? Because it shows Jeremiah Wright in context. He is not anti-American. He is not some crazy guy. He’s actually an incredible American who has lead an amazing life. He was a volunteer Marine in 1961. He was a valedictorian at Navy corpsman (medical specialist) school and attended to president Lyndon B. Johnson after his surgery in 1966. Yes, he was that good that he was one of few chosen to attend to the president of the United States. Do you think they let just anybody do that?

The right wing media has taken a few of his comments completely out of context and put them on loop so that they distort his character. They have done this for no other reason except to make Barack Obama look bad. This is character assassination of the worst kind.

When you watch this Moyers interview in full you see that Wright is not some raving ant-American lunatic. He’s a thoughtful patriotic man. Yes he questions America’s foreign policy. What true patriot doesn’t at this point? There is nothing anti-American about questioning your government’s policies. If there were then Martin Luther King would be the biggest anti-American of all time, right? Because he certainly thought there was a lot wrong with this country.

Our country was founded on the ideal of questioning the government. It is fascist to believe that you should always go along with what your government tells you. That is not what a true American does. A true American must always question the American government that is part of what makes him or her a patriot.

So again (I’ve posed this question before) who is the true patriot? The man who volunteered for the Marines and questions the unethical things his country’s government has done? (Jeremiah Wright) Or the men who dodged military service while making their country’s government do despicable things? (George W. Bush & Dick Cheney.)