Rev Wright has Book due out 'this fall!'

[jamwadmag]

Rev. Wright revelations only harming Obama

Kathleen Parker, a columnist with The Washington Post,
Article Last Updated: 05/01/2008

Anger is a tough emotion to conceal and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's
simmered barely beneath the surface during his Monday performance at the National Press Club.

But make no mistake: Barack Obama's "former pastor," by virtue only of Wright's recent retirement, is a righteously angry man. And he's mad principally at white folks -- descendants of slaveholders, authors of Jim Crow laws and alleged conspirators to genocide.

Whites, he made clear, brought damnation and terrorism to our shores.

Whatever Wright intended to accomplish during his media blitz these past few days -- including a speech to the NAACP and an interview with Bill Moyers -- he did little good for the Democrats' favored son.

But there's something else about Wright, whose attraction to fame is aggravating Obama's current difficulties. As Wright made clear Monday, he enjoys an audience and is a man practiced in the arts of emotion.

He's been stoking the fears and anger of his own flock for 36 years. He once notably brought a confused young man to Christ and gave him the words that became the title of the young man's best-seller -- "The Audacity of Hope."

Now that same young man is running for president of the United States of G.D. America. Is it possible that Wright, privately or unconsciously, doesn't really want Obama to win?

It can't be easy even for a man of God to sit in the bleachers and watch his protege hailed as the new messiah.

Given Wright's attraction to center stage -- and his own book due out this fall -- the only mystery is why he waited so long to speak up.

When a reporter asked that question Monday, Wright responded by paraphrasing Proverbs: "Better to be quiet and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and confirm the suspicion."

Too bad he didn't stick to that advice.