Jeremiah Wright: Fool and Egotist

If it was not already clear before his speech before the National Press Club on Monday, it is now undeniably obvious that Reverend Jeremiah Wright -- Barack Obama's pastor -- is not only a quite fanatical character, he is also a self-aggrandizing egotist of the worst kind. His speech, which merely reiterated his most hateful and demagogic sentiments in a disgustingly self-congratulatory manner, was truly cringe-inducing.

There is no way Wright could have been unaware that this speech would be greatly harmful to Obama's candidacy, which begs the question: is Wright unhappy with Obama because of his previous comments distancing himself from the pastor? Was this display some sort of revenge against Obama's moderate stances? Alternatively, is Wright just so totally self-absorbed and small-minded that he has no qualms sabotaging the first viable black presidential candidacy in American history in order to elevate himself to some mediocre level of celebrity along the lines of Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan?

I have to admit that, although I had previously acquainted myself with Wright's beliefs, his speech on Monday was the first time I saw him televised, and was thus the first chance I had to witness his shocking level of self-love. It is difficult to explain his demeanor, with its combination of unreasoning ignorance and total, foolish assuredness. It seemed he was going down a checklist of wild assertions -- for example, that the U.S. government invented HIV as a method of genocide against African Americans -- solely for the purpose of maximizing shock value. Wright struck me as a sort of Methodist Howard Stern, nearly devoid of thought and concerned only with making a spectacle of himself.

After all this, Wright astoundingly claimed that his thoughts were representative of the "black church", whatever that is supposed to mean. If Wright meant that he spoke for all church-going African Americans, he is not only totally self-absorbed, he is totally deluded as well. To suggest that all African Americans share his unthinking, paranoid beliefs is truly insulting to millions of intelligent, educated African Americans who no doubt cringed at his speech.

Before witnessing this recent speech, I viewed Wright as being on par with the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the nation. While Wright shares their unthinking, delusional, and offensively close-minded nature, he stands apart from them in his audacious extension of these attributes to the most extreme level.

I will leave it to others to determine exactly how close Obama is or was to Reverend Wright, and the degree to which Obama shares the Reverend's views, if he shares them at all -- I claim possession of no special information on the matter. It is remarkable, however, that Obama was ever drawn to Wright, and that he ever spent Sundays listening to the "wisdom" of a man so totally beneath him.

Excerpts of Wright's speech can be seen here, and Obama's denunciation of Wright following the speech can be read here.