This whole column reeks of concern-troll-dom.

And I think Joan Walsh is quite wrong about how much seeing the entire sermon in context mitigates Rev. Wright's "God damn America" line. Walsh doesn't even discuss what the main point of Wright's sermon was -- about how finding a better spirituality is paramount above which side is right. Wright was discussing America's spirituality and values.

The excerpt I watched was over 45 minutes long, and I still don't see any evidence Walsh has watched it. I don't think Walsh speaks from any authority when she asserts that Wright's meaning is not done service when his words are out of context.

Nor do I think Wright's message is Obama's. Wright only hurts Obama if people are successful in using him to hurt Obama.

Walsh's concern-trolling has the effect of hurting Obama through its sheer "depressed," "saddened," "troubled" insistence that Wright's statements hurt Obama.

In other words: concern trolling.

What else is new in Joan Walsh-land? We're on "Rev. Wright" column number 4 or 5 here.

Joan must have seen a different show with the Rev. Wright and Bill Moyers on Friday night. I watched it and was very impressed by what the Rev. Wright had to say. I also watched the long clips that Moyers showed and was impressed that the sound bites shown by the protesters were very much out of context.

I think that the Rev. Wright has a valid point that the myth of America is not in line with the reality of America. And, blacks have not seen anything of the myth. So their approach to America and how their religion treats America will undoubtedly be entirely different.

That said, I'm not so sure that anything but the clips of Wright in the commercials will make any difference. That's just politics in America. It's unfair to Wright and Obama but no one has said that the Republicans were going to conduct a fair campaign this time around.

And thanks to you for your thoughtful contributions....

I voted in the California primary. I don't vote again except in November when I will be voting and working for either Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton.

Susan

This kind of crap is why I read Salon so infrequently. Perhaps if Ms. Walsh is so concerned with the "extremism" of Rev. Wright she should join Senator McCain's campaign as a PR exec. Because the only thing about Wright's interview with Moyers is this response to it.

Good luck changing America though, Joan. What changes were you looking for again?

Man, Joan, you're making it harder and harder for me to give you the benefit of the doubt...

I am watching the Rev. Wright video.

*** NOTE: THE VIDEO CAN BE FOUND HERE:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/watch.html

First, why didn't you bother to provide a link to the video? You work for a web site, after all. Didn't you want people to watch the interview and judge for themselves?

Rev. Wright expresses his point very well, and there's hardly anything remotely disturbing about what he's saying. In fact, it just boggles the mind that you walked away from this with such a negative viewpoint.

People: Watch the video and judge for yourself!

It's very difficult to read your "interpretation" of the Civil War....

You wrote:

"For instance. there was truth in the old "Southern" histories which spoke of the Civil War as "The War for Southern Independence." It began by invoking the "right to independence " laid down in our Declaration of Independence while carefully avoiding the part about all men being created equal. It saw the American union was an association of free political communities under a common government, with the right of secession as a given. Sort of like the right of Slovenia to secede from Yugoslavia. That right was denied by the Lincoln Administration, and then after repelling Federal troops from its soil, it was faced by the threat of invasion and subjugation by Federal forces, after the establishment of a blockade of its ports that was in blantant violation of international law. The rights of the "Negroes" did not arise at this time, and men like the English Liberal John Acton favored their cause.

The South was crushed. Its economy destroyed, a huge perecentage of its young manhood killed and maimed. It was occupied by Federal troops and denied self-government until the people agreed to be ruled by regimes dominated by greedy Northerners, ignorant ex-slaves, and southern turncoats. It took to resistance to overthrow these regimes. Finally, after ten years, the North agreed to a return self-rule by thge white majority.

We cna look beyond this narrative and see they were still saddled with a large and ignorant black minority and a great dearth of capital. It took another century for the South materially to recover from the Civil War; psychologically they have only recently put behind them the hatred they bear for "Yankees." Thus they owe to Lyndon Johnson, who cut the knot of the rope that had been strangling the South since "The War."

First, let's remember, that Lincoln was murdered by a southerner, as many progressives have been murdered.

Second, the war was in fact about slavery. There was a huge and powerful abolitionist movement in this country (back to my post about resistance to evil). Many whites born in the South supported Reconstruction. Education became available for Black children for the first time in the south. Scalawags and carpetbaggers are terms coined by white Souther Dems to defame their opponents. History now rejects the right wing slant that you parrot above. Many Northerners went South to work to provide education to African Americans. African Americans never took over the Southern States. All governors were white and almost all legilsatures had white majorities throughout. Mississippi enjoyed less corrupt government during Reconstruciton than in the decades immediately afterward. Some white democrats used force and fraud to wrest control from biracisal Republican coalitions. Military rule ended by 1968 in all but three southern states.

I object to your characterization of slaves as "ignorant." All the slaves were working! and many were working in skilled trades such as sawyers, silversmiths, bakers, coopers, etc.

The rightwing Southerners were successful in taking over and using racist violence to reestablish control. The victors of the Civil War executed one Confederate officholder, Henry Wirz, notorious commantdant of Andersonville prison, while the losers murdered hundreds of officeholders, and other Unionists, white and balck. In Hinds County, Mississippi, alone, whites killed an average of one African American a day, many of them servicemen, during Confederate Recontsutrction, the period from 1865 to 1967 when ex-Confederates ran the governments of most Southern states.

Etc. Etc.Etc.

Susan