Columnist – John Sammon
The controversy over Reverend Wright and his torpedoing of the campaign of his parishioner Barack Obama proves how childish and paranoid the American people have become.

If this happened in Europe, Europeans being more sophisticated and somewhat more intelligent on average than Americans, there would be no controversy. Europeans wouldn’t hold Obama accountable for the statements of his pastor.

We’re operating under the allusion that if Wright says it, Obama believes it too. Guilt by association. It’s amusing to hear McCain call Wright’s remarks extremist, a few months after he sang a Beach Boys song, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran (sung to the tune of Barbara Ann).

Nobody called McCain’s sick joke extremist.

What has Wright said? Wright has the right to say it. He said instead of God bless America, God should damn America. In fairness. If the truth be known. Some of America should be damned. Such as the below.

1. America annihilated its Indian population and stole their land.

2. Americans kept others in slavery and then after a war to end it, kept African Americans in virtual servitude for the next hundred years with racist segregation.

3. Other crimes including Agent Orange for which there is not space here.

Wright called America an “imperialist” power. Well. We are. At times. We have a tendency to invade poor little countries much smaller than ours in an attempt to make them see it our way. We’ve invaded Nicaragua a half dozen times. Maybe instead of calling it “imperialist,” we should call it “concern” for Nicaraguan affairs.

President Bush wants the right to torture prisoners, and that’s not called “extremist.”

Wright’s statement that AIDS is a government plot to get rid of black Americans is a little bit far fetched and I can’t go along with that one.

That Obama’s campaign will go down the tubes because of statements made by someone over whom he (Obama) has no control is an abject lesson that to play the political game, you have to be foolishly optimistic and upbeat and never tell Americans very much of the unpleasant truths about their country. Thus, we can always feel superior, that we’re better people.

God only blesses America. God must be American and Republican.

Clearly, there is a price to be paid when you’re too candid.

It’s also another example of how the American people want to fixate on personality rather than issues. It has a long history from the Willie Horton episode that sank Michael Dukakis’s presidential hopes, to Thomas Eagleton, the vice presidential candidate who had prior mental problems, was replaced, but helped to terminate George McGovern’s campaign, or the Swift Boat right wing smear campaign against John Kerry.

You simply can’t be too truthful with the American people, if the truth is unpleasant. This is not new either. They forced Socrates to take poison.

I don’t believe America has sole ownership of morality, that we’re above reproach, that we’re God’s chosen people (especially white Republicans). Does that make me unpatriotic?

Wright is voicing frustration with a system that he thinks (with good reason) has treated he and his flock unfairly. He doesn’t speak for Obama just because Obama attends his church any more than commentator Bill O’Reilly speaks for McCain because McCain appears on his TV show.

The lesson here is clear. If you want to win office, don’t associate with big-mouth preachers, and don’t be too honest with the American people.

Copyright 2008 Sammonsays.