Hitch on Wright

As usual, when Christopher Hitchens agrees with me, I am particularly drawn to his compelling logic. Last week I opined that the real problem with Jeremiah Wright's comments was not the racial undertones but rather the absurdity and irresponsibility of his calumnies. Hitch makes a similar point today in Slate. Wrights comments are not controversial; they are simply wrong. In Hitch's words,

Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been—and were—applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it "controversial." It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

Hitch goes on to recite his usual obsessive pablum about religion being the root cause of racism. Blah, blah, blah. One tolerates Hitch's myopic rants in order to enjoy gems like this one:

To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.