For over a week now, everyone in the mainstream media has been talking about Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He has made what appears to be extremely distasteful comments about the 9/11 attack and about America as a nation. Usually, I am pretty skeptical and like to see the ’source data’ before drawing conclusions. In this case, I did not. But, it was in reading a blog named The Carpetbagger Report that I first realized my mistake in not looking for the full video of both of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. Indeed, when I happened upon them on YouTube (here and here), I realized that we had been duped by the mainstream media. You see, the mainstream media are not interested enough in accuracy and telling whole truths because they only have enough time for sound bites.
The 9/11 sermon by Reverend Wright delivered on 16 Sep 2001 was taken completely out of context. The theme of the Sermon was ‘Self-examination.’ Wright was suggesting that we as a people need to gather ourselves despite our warranted anger at being attacked on 9/11 to first do self-examination. Only then should we look to act in response to the attack.
The second sermon video clip with the quote “God Damn America” is also out of context, but is more in line with the views Wright is expressing in his sermon. Yet, here again, the message of the sermon was contrary to the clip showed on the news. His message was for Americans to be patient until the Bush Administration is out of office. Many times in the past, our government has committed serious wrongs to its people and to other nations. Yet, when the elected officials changed, we were able to return to the ideals that make this country great.
Originally, this story was picked up by Roland Martin of Anderson Cooper 360 on his blog on March 21st. I wonder if the mainstream media will pick up on this distortion eventually.
ADDENDUM (3/25): Roland Martin also picked up the second sermon as well. WHy isn’t more of the MSM picking up on the distortion of these sermons?
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