No Honor Among Sleaze?

By Russ Vaughn

Is it possible that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, despicable hate-mongering racist that he is, may be the one who emerges from this campaign conflict with his integrity intact?

In all his smarmy, romancing-the-podium posturing in his tribal dashikis, with dancing eyebrows and, sneering, leering references to all whites, there is one thing the Reverend hasn't done: he hasn't backed away from his beliefs, no matter how misguided and no matter how bombarded by the press he becomes. The Rev, in his role of mentor and spiritual advisor to a presidential candidate, stands unrepentantly, unabashedly like a rock, albeit a slimy one for sure, defending his well-publicized beliefs, stating his version of truth for all of us to hear. In light of that unrepentive intransigence one must give some consideration to the Rev's claim that he's the victim here, the one being sold out in the name of political expediency.

Then there's his protégé and that's a whole other story, the man who aspires to lead the greatest country in the world to even greater accomplishments, who offers phantasmal promises of hope and change and who, when the harsh reality of political expediency demands it, readily tosses his spiritual mentor and father figure to the media sharks and the political opposition. Over a period of twenty years, the Reverend affirmed him in Jesus Christ, gave him legitimacy in the black Christian community, sanctified his matrimonial vows and baptized his two little girls into the faith; but when the Rev becomes a political liability on the young man's road to greatness, he becomes nothing more than a victim of political amnesia and goes right under the front wheels, just like that typical white person, Obama's Grandma.

Is there anyone besides me who's starting to wonder if the overtly racist Reverend Wright isn't the more honorable of the two? Maybe he should be the Democratic candidate. At least then, we'd have some idea of what we're getting.

Is there no honor among sleaze?