Resurrecting Reverend Wright.

Today we've had posted a great video featuring Catholic Priest Michael Pfleger who forthrightly and without flinching defended both Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan against accusations by an O'Reilly Producer..

And completely PWNED him.

His main point resonates because maybe it's time we really stopped letting the media - any media - tell us what we should be thinking. Maybe we should listen with our own ears.

Here's what Jeremiah Wright really said about 9/11 and "Chicken's Coming Home to Roust"

As it turns out, he was quoting former Reagan's Former Ambassador to Iraq Edward Peck who had been ON FOX NEWS when he said it.

We're three weeks into this "controversy" and no one on Faux, and no one in the rest of the media has even bothered to listen beyond the 20-second clip and understand just who he was really quoting?

The Reverend's ultimate point wasn't that America is to blame for what occurred on 9/11, he was saying that instead of turning to blind revenge, instead of taking an "eye for an eye" and ultimately leaving us all blind - we needed to examine ourselves and rebuild own personal relationships with God.

Not simply subscribe to "Foxhole Religion" where everyone questions each others faith only when it's challenged.

Now here's the "God Damn America" clip... in context.

He points out that here that even though the Dred Scot decision essentially denied Blacks any rights what so ever under the constitution in 1850 - Government's Change

Prior to President Truman, the military was segregated - but Government's Change Things can get better.

However, God does Not Change.

Where Government's Lie, God does not Lie. When Government Fails, God Does not Fail.

America failed with the it's treatment of Native Americans. America failed with the internment of Japanese Americans. America failed in how it's treated it's slaves, it's failed when it attempt to "Free" the slaves into Jim Crow and segregation.

He's an interesting point - Wright didn't say that "black people shouldn't say God Bless America" because of what "White People" have done. He didn't put it in those terms - that's just what the media has told us he said - but he didn't. When he talks about America he says "WE" not "Them". We are America, and we should be held responsible - all of us - for what America and it's government does.

What I take from this is that God may "Damn" America and it's government - but ultimately that will Force it to Change not just get "Payback" on the white people.

One may not like how he says this, but none of this is false. None of this is Hate, it's Love - because it takes love to care enough to want your country to change for the better.

I will continue to disagree with what he said about the governments involvement in the spread of AIDS. (Haven't found a copy of the clip)

However I did see it previously...

And immediatly after Wright mentioned Aids, he says that America lied to us about Iraq, but Fox doesn't show that part. He goes on to mention several other lies back to back to back - WMD's, Nukes, Links to Al Qeada - and they never bother to point out that he's correct about all of them except the AIDs one.

HE was wrong about AIDS, but he wasn't wrong with WMD.

However, if Wright had said "Syphilus" (ala the Tuskegee Experiment) instead of AIDS he would been right. (He does suggest this in other sermons and it might have been a simple misstatement). Even assuming he did mean AIDS, and he didn't mispeak, if instead of "injections" he'd said that the U.S. government stood by and did nothing for years because they thought it was a "Gay disease", (Reagan wouldn't even say the word "AIDS" in public), and that even since then they've done very little to effectively help with AIDS massive spread across Africa. In fact as a result of so-called abstinence-only sex education teaching our kids and the world the LIE that condoms don't work - the spread of STDS including AIDShas increased in recent years rather than gone down.

There have been plenty of governmental lies to go around even without that one.

But the measure of a man really shouldn't be based on one over the top statement - judging him based on that is the very definition of prejudice and bigotry. Before drawing a final judgement, we should all give ourselves a chance to really know who and what we're talking about.

Maybe these soundbites do display some underlying racial hatred and grievance, and maybe we need to listen a little closer.

Here's what Trinity Church itself says about The Wright Controvery and "The Sound Bites"

Update Anderson Cooper On His Blog has brought up the fact the Wright was quoting Edward Peck.