Video: The latest Jeremiah Wright sideshow (unabridged version)

Like many men of the cloth, Rev. Jeremiah Wright appears to love a live microphone almost as much as he loves the lord Himself. Wright’s media blitz of the past week, on Bill Moyers’ Journal and in speeches before the NAACP and the National Press Club, has put his words back at the top of the daily chat cycle at a time when Barack Obama can scarcely afford another round of whack-a-preacher. Even voices as Obama-friendly as Keith Olbermann are wondering aloud how many more days of this the candidate can take. Politically, the media tour is a selfish move on the part of the good reverend, who has ample cause to understand by now that he is the race card in the campaign at present. David Gergen on CNN: “I’m sure Rev. Wright has many virtues. Loyalty to his former parishioner is not one of them.”

But let’s not put it all on Wright. His egoism doesn’t make the media’s quest for gotcha! soundbites from Wright’s mouth any less unconscionable or or any less racist. It’s sideshow politics — you would think, judging by the scrutiny of Wright’s words, that Obama had proposed to add him to the Democratic ticket — and it offers a window on how deeply the media and the political establishment have bought into the McCarthyite logic of GWB’s “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” line in the sand.

It’s also a window on white America’s willful ignorance of what black America really thinks of it. We see no comparable media treatment of the charming claque of God-hates-queers-and-Arabs preachers — men like John Hagee and Rod Parsley — whose endorsements John McCain has not only accepted but in some cases solicited. And we aren’t going to. If that’s not about race, then what is it about?

The gotcha! that has played most heavily in the past few days is Wright’s defensive response to Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia last month. He suggested to Moyers and to the National Press Club gathering that Obama only distanced himself from Wright because he had to in order to get elected. This sounds suspiciously like hurt feelings, but it has given blatherers from Rush Limbaugh to MSNBC’s talking ferret, Dan Abrams, fevered visions of — what? A black clerical-political conspiracy to undermine the all-American values that Superman and George W. Bush have spent their lives fighting for? The addition of “God damn America” to the Pledge of Allegiance?

It requires a suspension of rationality to suppose that the first black candidate to come so near a major party nomination for president is in the end the stooge of his former pastor. 

Below, you can watch and listen to Wright speaking for himself, if you care to. I’ve foregrounded the Q&A session that followed his National Press Club speech yesterday, but everything from the past week is below the jump: the rest of his press club Q&A, the speech to the NPC, his appearance with BIll Moyers on PBS last Friday, and his Sunday speech to the NAACP — which, as you can see in the video capture, was carried live on Fox News, a network that may or may not have heard of the NAACP previously.

Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club, 4/28/08, audience Q&A pt I (9:48)

Continued: Click “Read More”Wright at the National Press Club, audience Q&A pt II (10:22)

Wright at the National Press Club, audience Q&A pt III (7:52)

Wright at the National Press Club, 4/28/08, speech pt I (10:42)

Wright at the National Press Club, speech pt II (10:39)

Wright at the National Press Club, speech pt III (7:51)

Wright on Bill Moyers’ Journal, 4/24/08, pt I (7:58)

Wright on Bill Moyers’ Journal, pt II (9:57)

Wright on Bill Moyers’ Journal, pt III (9:31)

Wright on Bill Moyers’ Journal, pt IV (9:44)

Wright’s NAACP speech, 4/27/08, pt I (10:05)

Wright’s NAACP speech, pt II (10:55)

Wright’s NAACP speech, pt III (10:54)

Wright’s NAACP speech, pt IV (10:46)