The Chicago Tribune has spoken to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. What he had to say doesn’t really matter. It never did. What this does bring to mind, as a few conservative blogs are once again ranting about how evil Obama must be because of what he allegedly heard Wright say in church all those years, is another insight into the conservative mind.
Most liberals (other than a few rabid Clintonistas who I never considered to be significantly different from conservatives anyways) were never concerned about what Obama may or may not have heard Wright say in church. What we are concerned about is Obama’s views, not Wright’s views. Besides, the same conservatives who were upset by what Obama might have heard Wright say never seem to have paid any attention to the relatively conservative economic advisers Obama has had when making up their ridiculous claims that Obama desires to redistribute the wealth. If one believes that Obama should be judged by the people he listens to, it isn’t kosher to pick and choose which people you point out when assigning the views of others to Obama.
This all makes much more sense when I think back to this post which considers the role of talk radio in the conservative fantasy world, relying considerably on this post by Nate Silver. The rants by Reverend Wright are very similar to the rants on conservative talk radio, except from a different ideological extreme. The key difference is that, while liberals can listen to such rants and think for themselves, many conservatives cannot. While conservatives listen to Rush Limbaugh and others on conservative talk radio and go on to repeat his nonsense, they just might not realize that non-conservatives can listen to nonsense without having their own beliefs be influenced.
