Thursday, April 24, 2008

Brian's Primary Blogs

National Primaries: As a publicity stunt, all three front-running presidential candidates, Hilary, McCain and Obama, all agreed to appear on World Wrestling Entertainment’s show RAW. Above is a news broadcast about it. The idea is to get those wrestling fans out to vote. The question is, will it work?

Opinion – Um… I think it may have been better for the candidates if they had stayed away from television where people pretend to be beating the tar out of each other. I suppose I might be just one in the minority of people who would rather see the candidates do something more constructive with their time – like a televised tea party where they discussed novels and theology, or a leisurely game of golf with foreign dictators like ailing Fidel Castro or blusterous Hugo Chavez. I guess when one of them agreed, though, the others must have not had much choice if they wanted the wrestling fans’ votes. This is a sad time for our country.

Primaries 2: Tomorrow, a PBS interview between Bill Moyers and Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s controversial pastor) will air. In it, Wright contends that his words criticizing the US Government as bringing 9/11 upon itself and systematically oppressing the Black Community have been taken out of context for devious reasons. While the pastor may have been a controversial obstacle for Obama, he has said he could no more disown his pastor than he could disown the black community.

Opinion – I don’t have a problem with Obama not disowning his pastor (as a politician, how could he without losing a lot of his supporters?!). But I do have a problem with Jeremiah Wright’s messages. Not because they are “Anti-American”. I agree America has a history of being run by “rich white men” who have treated Native Americans, African-Americans, and people of any ethnicity with darker skin poorly and indecently. But I feel Wright is calling for reverse discrimination (these days, as far as I have seen and heard, minorities get preferential treatment in education and the work place), and though he says he “loves the hell” out of his enemies, he is fostering a mindset of “blame the white man for all your troubles”. He is full of bitterness and has not learned how to turn the other cheek. He is a blind man leading the blind – because while his community may be discriminated against, he cannot see that not all white men are rich. Jesus not only came to earth so that he could be Jeremiah Wright’s personal black savior, but so that he might be the savior of all men: black and white, rich and poor.