Can The House Of Obama Survive The Wright Wrecking Ball?

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While it is true that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not a blood relation of presidential hopeful Barack Obama per se, Mr. Obama has Stood By His Man through thick and thin, calling him his spiritual mentor and uncle and stating that 'I could no more disavow him than I could the black community.'

Recent polls seem to indicate that Obama has weathered, to a degree, Hurricane Jeremiah. But the bad news just keeps on coming, and the Rev. Wright is fast becoming the albatross around Obama's neck that may well yet sink him in the general election.

The latest Wright imbroglio to burn up the wires was taken from a eulogy written by the good Reverend for the late Dr. Asa Hilliard in the pages of the December 2007 issue of Trumpet Magazine, an online publication managed by Mr. Wright and edited by his daughter Jeri.

Strangely enough, the online version of The Trumpet has mysteriously disappeared in its entirety, but enough of the text has been preserved on the blog sites of CNS News, ABC News and Newsday's Spin Cycle that I do not have to rely on memory. Some excerpted passages, as follows:

'(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him. The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans.'

'From the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth (in a barn in a township that was under the Apartheid Roman government that said his daddy had to be in), up to and including the circumstances surrounding Jesus' death on a cross, a Roman cross, public lynching Italian style.'

It appears not only that the Rev. Wright seems to contextualize every event in human history since Time Immemorial through the prism of the 'American Black Experience,' but that his racism is maturing from the general to the specific.

He then closes his Tribute Of Remembrance with the obligatory slams against the US government:

"(Jesus) refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others. The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God."

Remind me not to ask this guy to speak at my funeral. But I digress.

So now it is the Italian-American electorate that is frowning unfavorably upon the Rev. Wright, and by default the man who calls him mentor and uncle. The fawning Joy Behar of The View may consider 'garlic nose' a compliment, but The Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago begs to differ:

'We're really, really sad that at this day and age that that kind of thought would be in someone's mind and would be spewed in public,' said Louis Rago, president, Italian American Human Relations Foundation.

Though Obama has been quite vocal in his opposition to the Rev. Wright's more heinous statements, he has also engaged in fumbling equivocation as well, recently telling a captive audience the following:

'This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down ... into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country.'

Obama could not be more correct. That 'half-minute sound clip' speaks volumes to the racial divisions between Jeremiah Wright and vast swaths of the American electorate, which now includes Italians, Jews, veterans, patriotic Americans, the families of 9/11 victims and typical white people like me.

These are not, as Obama would have us believe, isolated incidents. Mr. Wright has left a rather prolific and foul legacy on paper and in the ether. Earlier today I downloaded a pdf copy of a May 2006 article by the Rev. Wright from Trinity UCC's website, www.tucc.org, entitled 'Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Ahead,' which seems most apropos for Obama vis-a-vis the Wrecking Ball that is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

A cursory search of the three-page document revealed twenty instances of the term 'white supremacy.' The link has somehow vanished from the TUCC main page, but you can access the article in pdf form on Trinity UCC's website at the following URL (until and unless it disappears, of course): (Link to PDF)

Can Obama's campaign continue to survive the wrecking ball that is Jeremiah Wright, the man he calls spiritual advisor and mentor? Only time will tell. A day can seem like forever in a political campaign, as I'm sure Hillary could tell you as pertains to the Tuzla sniper fire mishap. But political memories in America can also be very short. In today's jam-packed light-speed superhighway of news and information reporting, the hottest news of today often becomes yesterday's ancient history, as dead as Julius Caesar. In Wright's case, Obama can only Hope that doesn't Change.

If Obama were smart he would call this most recent incident regarding Italians as 'garlic noses' the last straw and throw Wright under the bus for the sake of his campaign. McCain I'm sure, and Hillary most certainly, would not hesitate to do so.

Or, he can sit around and wait for the Wright wrecking ball to smash away at yet another vital constituency and continue to remind the already sizable Coalition Of The Highly Offended, as we get closer to Election Day, exactly why they were offended in the first place. I believe I have the Italian-American community backing me up on that one today. Obama ain't never been called a 'garlic nose.'