Now that Senator Barack Obama has spoken to Americans as adults, addressing the nexus of religion and race, two of the most serious - yet "third rail" for their lethal potential - subjects on the American political scene, has he succeeded in raising the bar for Election 2008 discourse? Only if you appreciate being spoken to like a grownup.
If you prefer baby talk, then keep staying tuned to Radio Bush. I'm not entirely sure who actually listens on their car radios (what stations carry it, anyway?) to The President's Weekly Radio Address, but anyone hearing yesterday's Easter Weekend message (here on mp3, text here) might be forgiven if they confused it with one of the many Christian radio preachers out there in the Homeland. But Ye would have been only partly wrong: it was indeed the Right's Reverend George W. Bush, who has a way of confusing lots of things, but especially the traditional American distinction between church and state. If there had been "Onward Christian Soldiers" playing in the background, no one would have been surprised.
Religion and War usually don't make a happy combination (see jihad, the Crusades, the India-Pakistan Partition, the list goes on), but preaching in church - captured on video, in his US Army lieutenant general's uniform - about how "my God is bigger than his" (referring to a Somali warlord) didn't result in William G. Boykin's dismissal from Rumsfeld's Pentagon back in 2003.
With Religion and Politics, things are more complicated, but similar. Boykin, you see, might have been deemed a bit loony in some quarters ("because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan"), but that kind of talk is what millions of people hear from their pulpits. They are not all Presidential candidates, of course, but they certainly don't think of walking out or changing churches because the preacher went overboard last Sunday.
One major difference between the gospel of "Reverends" Boykin and Bush and the controversy over Barack Obama's reaction to Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons is this: drag religion into politics and war wrapped in the American flag and you can do no wrong. But be caught in the same church as someone who dares criticize America's record on race from the pulpit and your patriotism is besmirched. And - shame on him - the latest besmircher was Bill Clinton, who probably shouldn't be casting any stones on moral issues, let alone matters of patriotism. Clinton's outburst was the latest example of what Timothy Egan in Saturday's New York Times called "Donner Party Democrats," a wonderfully biting (sorry) satire of the Democratic Party's unfortunate cannibalistic tendencies.
The other difference is race. Remember, Obama's speech in Philadelphia, "A More Perfect Union," was largely about race in America, and how he - half white, half black - relates to his country and the world. He felt the need to propound on this weighty (and weighted) topic in the wake of criticism over his fidelity to Reverend Wright, which has not wavered, though Obama did condemn the "incendiary language..." of his "former pastor." Is it, as comedian/commentator Bill Maher has put it (paraphrased by Adam Howard in AlterNet), in a sports analogy to baseball great Jackie Robinison
because just like Robinson was when he broke the color barrier in baseball, Obama is held up to such a higher standard. He must appear flawless in a way that no white candidate would be expected to be. Would Obama's experience or patriotism be as obsessively attacked as it is if he weren't Black? I don't think so.
If you doubt that there's a racial component in these wars of religion, how come you have to go to the blogosphere to get intelligent comment on John McCain's relations with (white) preachers John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, and Rod Parsley, respectively Catholo-phobic, homophobic, and Islamophobic?
I'm sure it's scant consolation to Senator Obama, but I do see a silver lining in the entire Reverend Wright episode: with repeated video loop screenings of Obama (TV's helpful spotlighting of him in the congregation reinforces the halo effect) in a church (not a mosque), listening to a minister (not an imam), clapping to a gospel choir (and not responding to the muezzin's call to prayer) - no one should entertain any more spurious talk of Obama-as-Muslim. Surely you can't be accused of subscribing to firebrand Bible-thumping Christianity and "why do they hate us" fundamentalist Islam concurrently? Or do I underestimate the gullibility of parts of the populace?