Damn, that was a lovely valentine put on the air by Bill Moyers tonight for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's longtime pastor and spiritual advisor.Wright appeared on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, the show ended forty-five minutes ago.
In brief: Moyers is shameless. When he finally got around to bringing up Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and he brought up Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments, Wright countered Moyers that those statements were said "twenty years ago." Moyers nodded in agreement, and repeated Wright's "twenty years ago."
What a crock. Wright surely recalls what was a major Chicago news story two years ago, when NOI member Claudette Muhammad, a member of an Illinois human rights panel to Farrakhan's annual Saviour's Day rally.
"These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength ... It's the wicked Jews the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It's wicked Jews, false Jews that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!"
The honorable minister went so far as to predict that "wicked state of Israel" would be "cleansed with blood."
Several members of the panel resigned in protest of Ms. Muhammad's presence on that board.
Here are a whole bunch of other Farrakhan rantings against Jews, courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League.
Wright came across as calm and relaxed in the interview with Moyers, a big liberal, who is quite dull--the Reverend Wright should be congratulated for not falling asleep.
But did I miss something? Moyers brought up the conspiracy-nut tale that Wright "preached" about--the U.S government helped spread the AIDS virus within the African American community--at the beginning of his show, but did Moyers challenge Wright about that statement?
I took a phone call during the broadcast, so I may have to review the show on DVR.
Related post:
Rev. Wright meets Bill Moyers--and a return to my boyhood home
On Holocaust Remembrance Day in Illinois, media remembers Nation of Islam member on state hate crimes panel
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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you aren't being followed.
ReplyDeleteWright was in the medical wing of the Navy so maybe this "conspiracy-nut" tale from the past is on his mind whether the aids tale is true or not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_experiment
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male[1] also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Pelkola Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study or the Tuskegee Experiments was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 201 control group without syphilis) poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers were used as subjects to observe the natural progression of syphilis without medicine.
This study became very notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.[2]
In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies.
By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history",[3] led to the 1979 Belmont Report, the establishment of the National Human Investigation Board, and the requirement for establishment of Institutional Review Boards.
btway: Wright was clear in his interview to distinguish his views from Farrakhan's. You chose only a little bit to talk about.
But you make a good point about F's recent anti-semitic statements. That kind of stuff is intolerable and Wright should denounce it more forcefully - - AS OBAMA HAS!!!!! in fact, Obama is probably the one person who could deal with Farrakhan on behalf of all who have a problem there - - but that's a little more subtle thinking than the kind of guilt by association that we are fed everyday, isn't it.
An absolute joke. I mean, no one is going to take an interview conducted by Moyers seriously, since it's obvious that his role is to simply toss up one softball after another. The real offensive part of this is that the public is forced to finance airing this tripe.
ReplyDeleteEud, Tks for commenting...I'm aware of the Tuskegee syphillis experiment. It was a disgraceful episode in our nation's history. Keeep in mind, though, no one defends that today, where plently of ppl overlook Farrakhan's bigotry of the "good things" he supposedly does.
ReplyDeleteNext, Moyers didn't challenge Wright spreading the lie about our gov't spreading the AIDS virus.
Wright said Farrakhan was a Muslim. True, Calypso Louis calls himself one, but one of the NOI creeds is that white ppl, folks like myself, were created by a mad scientist named Yacoub 8,000 years ago.
Shi'ites, Sunnis, Sufi's etc. don't accept that Nation of Islam as part of their faith.
After some hemming and hawing in the Cleveland debate, Obama did denounce Farrakhan, but only after calling him "Minister Farrakhan" twice. He doesn't deserve that kind of respect.
Thanks as always for dropping in, Wolf.
But once the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" comes back, things will be better as far as the public airwaves, just as the Easter Bunny will visit Orthodox Christian homes tonite.