Catching up on current affairs over the past week, I watched the Bill Moyers Journal program from last Friday. He did a long interview or conversation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former minister. This was just before Wright's appearance at the National Press Club that stirred up the latest round of furor over his views and prompted Obama to forcefully denounce him.
The Moyers program is also available online here. It certainly portrays Wright in a different light than a lot of recent press coverage, including providing the context of a sound bite we've all heard over and over about 9/11. The most fascinating bit to me was a still photo they dug up from the 60s showing the only time the two of them had met before. It was in an operating room at Bethesda Naval Hospital where President Lyndon Johnson was recovering from gall bladder surgery. Moyers was there as Johnson's press secretary. Wright was monitoring Johnson's heart - he was a cardiopulmonary technician in the Navy. Who knew? Wright tells the story of how the Secret Service accosted him when he returned from a coffee break. That segment and the photo are at about 10:50 into the first part of the program.
I still think Wright has some real problems, not the least of which is the damage he's doing to Obama's candidacy. I can't fathom his motivation in continuing to do so. But this interview makes it clear that he and his views are much more complex than media reports and politicians are making them out to be.
UPDATE: Moyers has written this piece in The Nation about his interview with Wright.
Good Blog Entry (and thanks for the link)! It never ceases to amaze how artistically the general press can spin things. ;-)
Posted by: C Velo | May 03, 2008 at 11:29 AM