Friday, March 28, 2008

The Very Quality

There has been a lot of discussion about what Barack Obama knew about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American, racist beliefs, and when he knew it. It turns out, though, that there is no mystery at all: Obama's own autobiography, Dreams of My Father, answers the question. In Dreams of My Father, Obama describes the very first time he attended Trinity and heard Wright preach. What was Wright's theme? A racist attack on white people. I heard this on Hugh Hewitt's radio show today:

It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere ... That's the world! On which hope sits.

Obama describes himself being moved to tears by this sophomoric analysis of the world's problems. By his own account, Obama wasn't repelled by Wright's racism, it was the very quality that drew Obama to Wright's church!