Tuesday, April 29, 2008

[Insert a Wright Pun]


Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan

Well, after some feedback on my last post, I decided that I should write a slightly less snarky and angry post on the whole Wright affair. Here's my beef with Wright-gate: there's no reason, aside from a fucked-up narrative, that this is a story. Furthermore, attempts to use Wright's behavior--and Obama's response to that behavior--as a way to judge Obama's candidacy are fraught with fallacy at best, racial dog-whistling at worst.


To show you where I'm coming from, I'll give a sampling Wright-gate arguments. I'll start with the most inane and move to the least. Here's Wright-gate 1:

1. Rev. Wright has some extremist (and objectionable) views.
2. Rev. Wright was Sen. Obama's confidant and pastor for twenty some years.
3. Obama has the extremist views that Wright has.


Let's assume, for the moment, that we've seperated out those extremest views and positions Wright actually holds (for example, praise for Farrakhan and AIDS conspiracy theories) from those he doesn't (Hannity's bizzare claims that Wright is a black separatist and hates America). We'll leave in the untrue, but understandable, belief that Wright doesn't much care for America (a dubious position considering that Wright served in Korea).


With these assumptions attached, there would be reason to suspect Obama may hold at least a milder form these views. However, when compared with Obama's actions, policies, and articulated beliefs, it seems clear that he doesn't. Obama, for example, clearly isn't an AIDS conspiracy believer, nor does he hate America. Obama's message is polar opposite from Farrakhan's and there is no reason to suspect that Wright's overtly political stances have rubbed off on Obama, considering the statements, behavior, and tenor of Sen. Obama and his campaign.


In order to uphold Wright-gate 1, we would need to then add on a new premise, namely:

4. Obama is concealing these extremist views, but does actually hold them.


If this premise doesn't seem a bit hard to swallow, you might want to trade in your tinfoil hat. Here's why. Wright's church does a number of amazing things for its community, and, furthermore, it has a rather stunning community (Oprah and Tiger Woods, for example). It's exactly the kind of place that a community activist (like Obama) would find appealing. What's more, virtually any other explanation for Obama's presence in the church (including political gain, or other more nefarious motives) make for better explanations than the rather unfalsifiable belief that Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate.


I think that Wright-gate 1 is dealt with, more or less. Let's move on to a less inane argument: Wright-gate 2. 2 can be articulated like this:

1. Rev. Wright has some extremist (and objectionable) views.
2. Rev. Wright was Sen. Obama's confidant and pastor for twenty some years.
3. While Obama does not hold Rev. Wright's beliefs, he demonstrated poor judgment by staying in Wright's church.
3a. While Obama does not hold Rev. Wright's beliefs, he gave tacit endorsement to those beliefs by staying in Wright's church.


This argument is essentially the "Wright is bad; why didn't Obama leave?" argument. Sen. Clinton made it in the Penn. debate when she said that she would have left during the "chicken's coming home to roost" bit. This argument is more potent and less prima facie fallacious than Wright-gate 1. It hits Obama on one of his self-proclaimed strengths: his judgment.


But there are a number of background assumptions that go into this argument that have to be examined. First, there is the belief that what Wright said was so objectionable that there is no other aspects of Wright's life that could redeem him. This is a tough one to argue against, mostly because the people who tend to make it do so in such a black-and-white way that you can't debate them. You either agree that Wright is a racist, despicable, piece of shit or you don't. And if you don't, then you're on the side of black terrorists and the anti-science freaks. Shortly put, this argument is so unnuanced and requires such a question-begging, narrow view of Wright's incendiary YouTube clips that one cannot reasonable sustain such a view.


The second background assumption is that a politician's choice of religious leader is somehow a good metric for judging presidential worthiness. This is a difficult argument to make--especially as broadly as you need to in order to make Wright-gate a big enough deal that it means anything. I would agree that it is a good metric, if and only if (necessary and sufficient condition here) it demonstrates something about that candidate's (a) policy beliefs and behavior or (b) character with regard to his behavior.


The reason I hold this is that I believe there should be some degree of seperation between a politician's personality and his politics (provided the personality doesn't get in the way of her politics). To hold the broader view means that people (not just politicians) are responsible for the political beliefs of the apolitical influences in their lives--for reasons that pass understanding.


Without these two background assumptions, there simply is no way to make the leap to the conclusion (three and three a) in a way that matters; Obama wasn't giving tacit endorsement: Wright is largely apolitical in his life. Neither did Obama demonstrate poor judgment. Why? Apolitical figures' political beliefs aren't important for their personal worth (you could, I suppose, go reducto ad Hitlarium on me, but I think we can see how this is different, given my discussion of the first background assumption).


Lastly, a quick note, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to obsess over his relationship to Obama, when he gave--at least what I think to be--a good explanation for his willingness to stand by (initially) his pastor--he's like the crazy grandpa or whatever, which is a good analogy, and fits with my discussion of the second background assumption.


The next class of Wright arguments revolve around an even more potent, and even less first-blush inane construction. The first has to do with the need to denounce Wright. There are a number of arguments that could be made in this regard, but they generally deal with inferring some kind of motivation from the timing and/or nature of Obama's denouncing. The arguments go like this:

1. Obama "hid" Wright (didn't invite him to his campaign kick-off or something) before Wright's comments hit the news.
2. Obama's tone later on was straight-forward approach (his Penn. speech)
3. Obama changed his tune and approach due to media pressure
4. Obama is unprincipled.


I'll leave it to you to extrapolate further arguments based on timing (for example it was media pressure that caused his denouncement to be now rather than earliar...)


This argument is probably question-begging (presumes the conclusion--not question-begging in the slang sense). I say this because there really is no way of getting to that particular inference without relying on non-epistemic values. I, for example, am far more sympathetic to two other interpretations: (1) he "hid" then confronted because he recognized the potential danger and didn't want to give ammo to our Responsible media. And even if it was responding to media pressure, that isn't necessarily unprincipled. On the contrary, it's an example of doing what the situation called for. He didn't want the confrontation, but saw that he would have to.


In order to see it as unprincipled, you'd have to read that into his actions--so you're assuming the conclusion.


In regards to the media coverage. I stand by the idea that there is probably (1) a racial component to the Wright-fest and (2) that there no reason to believe that the media isn't injecting its own sick values into the discourse. In other words, this is the media engaging in a normative enterprise, disguising it as a positive one.


My friend Marc pointed out that the writer of The New York Times piece I cited (here), Alessandra Stanley, is a TV critic--and a bad one at that. Apparently, she lambasted The Sopranos finale because she didn't get it, which makes sense judging from her lambasting of the Wright scandal because she doesn't get that either.


While illuminating, inasmuch as it demonstrates a further example of our media's stupidity, it leads to some interesting further questions. Why did The Times let such a blatant editorializer write a value-leaden and inane article for the front page? It also doesn't answer the question of why The Times bothered to engage in this at all.


whether or not The Times was signaling, through their use of a TV critic, that they don't really believe this to be a real news story is somewhat moot. They reported on it. They let her write a scathing write up of Wright on the front page of their paper. They engaged in the controversy and did so in a way that was maybe worse then an actual news piece--it was an editorial, plain and simple. And it was on the front page.


I'm calling this duck a duck. Not to mention, if The Times was giving this story the brush-off by putting an editorial on the front page (obviously, I don't buy that argument), it still doesn't explain the frenzy in the other news networks. Nor does it excuse Matthews's (et al) infallibly asinine coverage.


Lastly, I want to highlight something I stumbled upon while doing research for this post. The Other McCain, a conservative blog, posits the theory that Obama himself "got their friends at ABC" to break the story. Why? So he didn't have to deal with it later. I agree with Whiskey Fire: The guy's a douchebag.


Wilder Voice goes to print Thursday/Friday. Comes out in about a week.