Reverend Wright and Don Imus: Hate Speech in Context

"The government invented the HIV viurs as a means of genocide against people of clor".

The government has given drugs to black men in order to incarcerate them."

The above quotes, of course, come from Revend Wright (paraphrases, but fair paraphrases using some of the exact words).   Then there is the WRITTEN eulogy, where Reverend Wright ethnically insulted ITALIANS (not Romans), and, in effect, blamed "white people" (Italians--that is, Romans) for the crucifixion of Christ.   If Reveredn Wright had limited himself to "Romans", it might almost be defensible.  As it was, it was an ethnic slur designed to fit into that "black liberation" world view that Jesus was "black", and one of the early black victims of white "Europeans".  See the previous two entries.

What is the present leftist mantra?  You know it.  You are hearing it all over CNN, and even put forth on Fox.  You have always heard it all over the hopeless MSNBC.  The mantra is that the infammatory quotes of Reverend Wright (not just the above, but several others) are taken "out of context".  However, what you NEVER hear is how statements like the above are explainable IN CONTEXT.  The idea is the Orwellian idea of the Big Lie:  If you say something often enough, eventually people will believe it is true.  There is NO "context" that can same statements like those above, and they are consistent with the world view of  Reverend Wright (see previous two entries). 

As is often the case, Barack Obama has convicted himself with his own words on this one (as have most of the left). 

Remember Don Imus?  In a what was meant to be a comedy riff (everyone agrees on that), Imus used the term "nappy haired 'ho's" in connection with the Rutgers basketball team.  Okay, it was not funny.  It was offensive.  But it was THREE WORDS ("out of context", and "playing over and over again in an endless loop" anyone?).

Now Don Imus has done a lot of good work in raising money for, and awareness of, SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), as well as children's cancer charities.  Imus has his own chairty ranch in New Mexico for afflicted children. 

There is just no comparison between Reverend Wright and Don Imus.  Imus was trying, unsuccessfully, to be FUNNY.   He was merely racially insensitive, crude and insulting.  Reverend Wright was SERIOUS--stating hate speech, which is also transparently FALSE, in a way that can only stir up hatred. 

When asked about Imus, Obama had no doubts.  His response as to whether Imus should be fired:  "I don't want my daguthers exposed to this sort of thing, and so there is no doubt what I would do if I were Imus' employer". 

Obama, of course, had no problem exposing his daughters to the much more virulent, hate speech of Reverend Wright.  Worse, he had no problem with the black lyouth of Chicago being exposed to this sort of thing, which may explain, in part, why there have been 331 "gang banger" type shootings in Chicago so far this year. 

Then there is Larry Summers, at Harvard.  He merely stated what amounted to a truism:  "Women think differently from men, and therefore we have to consider that some of the disparity in the number of women mathematicians, compared to men, may have more to do with that than with "sexism".  He was cricivied.  Yet, Reverend Wright has just finished a speech (the Detroit NAACP speech that I heard in its entirety) suggesting that African-Americans, AS A RACE, do not think "logically", like Europeans, because their brain is "different".  Does this mean that Wright is suggesting that we not bother to teach African-Amiricans mathematics, or the hard (logical) sciences?  And this was the SANITIZED Reverend Wright--the one I correctly predicted would eventually be trotted out once it was thought that he could be trusted to seem "non-threatening".

Could Don Imus get away with saying that he was taken "out of context".  Don't be silly.  Could Larry Summers get away with that, or even with the fact that he was saying little more lthan the exact TRUTH?  Nope.  Yet, the "crimes" of those two were minuscule, in coparison with the hate speech of Reverend WRight.

Of course I am saying that people using the "out of context" line are DISHONEST.  Now there may be a few leftists who have CRITICIZED the "gotcha" mentality of modern "political correctness", where isolated staements are used to destroy people--even when relatively minor (as Wrights' are not).  For example, if a leftist defended Dog, the bounty hunter, for his PRIVATE, racist remarks on the telephone to his child, then I might say that such a person might be regarded as honest in a defense of Reverend Wright (a defense that does not show that he was quoted "out of context", but only a;;eges  that the "sound bites" have to be considered based on the totality of what Wright has said, and the totality of the good things that he has done--a subtle REDEFINING of the phrase, "out of context").

Very few leftists exist willing to accept the "out of context", or "isolated", excuses for racist--or merely racially offensive--statements.  For all others, the "out of context" "excuse" is as DISHONEST as it gets.  It is so dishonest, in fact, that there is almost no pretense of intellectual consistency.  The whole idea seems to be the Big Lie concept:  that you can just repeat something so often, counting on mainstream media support, that you can drown out the contrary view.

Needless to say, this blog does not accept such dishonesty.  Note that I did NOT defend Don Imus for "out of context" statemtents.  I merely said, in this blog, that his OFFENSIVE statements were intended to be funny (unfunny as they were), and not enough to FIRE someone.