Bill Moyers weighs in on the Obama-Wright controversy and, as usual, forgets to take of his ideological blinders.

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: “Who’s telling the truth over there?”

“Everyone,” he said. “Everyone sees what’s happening through the lens of their own experience.”

That’s how people see Jeremiah Wright.

In my conversation with him and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage.

Apparently, like John Kerry, the voters just aren’t smart enough to understand Reverend Wright. But that’s not really my point, or Bill’s.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins.

But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.

After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
…
This is crazy and wrong — white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.

Which means it is all about race, isn’t it?

No, it doesn’t.

When John McCain goes knocking on the doorstep of Hagee, Falwell or Robertson, it’s because McCain’s a politician beating the bushes for the hearts and minds of voters. Had Obama gone to Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton in search of endorsements, the partisans would have cried foul, but the voters and the media wouldn’t have cared. But Obama didn’t go knocking on Wright’s door for votes. Obama sat in Wright’s pulpit to drink in his message for more than two decades. There’s a difference there.

Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” And since Obama spent most of his adult life grazing at Reverend Wright’s feet, the voters have every right to examine what’s in the grass.

[Update] Frank Rich is trying the same trick in the NYT.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, McCain Blogs, 123beta, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, , Democrat=Socialist, , and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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