Several diaries today have already pointed out that the media is trying to get back onto the Rev. Wright story, apparently in an "abstinence education"-esque belief that the reason it hasn't made a difference is that we haven't pushed it hard enough. A sample of today's story is here on MSNBC's First Read:
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on TODAY, "And now -- even more controversy involving Reverend Wright. An Internet search reveals church bulletins over the past year with controversial 'pastor pages' from Wright. Some reprint anti-Israel writings from a range of people -- from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to an advisor to Elijah Muhammed and Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.
"One of Marzook's columns, reprinted by the church from the Los Angeles Times, says: "Why should any Palestinian recognize the monstrous crimes carried out by Israel's founders and continued by its deformed modern Apartheid state?"
What I haven't seen noted anywhere is that Obama pre-empted this line of "attack" a week ago in his speech.
When Obama gave his "a more perfect union" speech a week ago, reaction on Kos was almost uniformly very positive. But one paragraph was roundly lambasted by Kossacks:
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
My opinion at the time, which seemed to be shared with many on Kos, was: Well yeah, we know that in the current US political climate it's absolutely necessary to present the Israel-Palestine situation in a blatantly oversimplistic and one-sided manner like that, but why did it need to be put in the speech at all? The 30 second loop of snippets from Wright's sermons didn't include any significant Israel bashing, so why not stick to the stuff that was in there?
Well, now we know. Obama obviously knew that Wright had some degree of anti-Israel political views, and is aware that that's an issue that's completely toxic to any presidential candidate in today's world, so he denounced and rejected those views right up front before they even started getting media play.
Won't it be great to have a president who thinks ahead?