Friday night (April 25), I watched the Bill Moyers-Jeremiah Wright interview on PBS in full. A Few Quick Thoughts on the spectacle:

1. Evidently, Wright's appearance on Bill Moyer's Journal is only the beginning. Is this charm offensive part of a coordinated plan devised by, or cleared through, the Obama Campaign? If so, they must see themselves in a desperate place, for this is a high-risk gambit (if Team Obama is not behind this Wright roll-out, they must be fit to be tied). But my guess is that there is some coordination.

Somewhere, someone made a decision to explain (and justify) Reverend Wright in the "prophetic" tradition of American Christianity. Although I happen to think that argument has a trace of validity, I am convinced that the project to explicate this tradition to the electorate in the midst of a presidential campaign is much too ambitious. Even more problematic, the complicated person and ministry of Reverend Wright seems to go well beyond that not-so-simple framework.

2. Staged as an erudite conversation between two American intellectuals, Wright certainly found Bill Moyers Journal a friendly venue to begin his national crusade to redeem his image. The Reverend struck a toned-down pose, although he could not seem to help himself when he fell into some preacher-type mimicry when deriding some of his (and Barack Obama's) less enlightened critics. But mostly Wright looked grandfatherly, scholarly, buttoned-down and close-cropped (even his signature chin whiskers were so closely trimmed as to be nearly invisible). He was the picture of a reasonable and not-at-all frightening man.

3. Of course, no one will be surprised that Moyers was the perfect shill: asking presumably "tough questions" while subtly framing them with friendly assumptions.

4. Nevertheless, even with every advantage that Bill Moyers and PBS could project upon the Reverend, he still came up a bit short. There was still something not-quite-right about the Prophet Jeremiah. Almost every question and answer from this hour of discussion (the transcript in full here) provides a problematic window into the inner workings of Barack Obama's minister, his church, and the religious and political culture he inhabited for twenty years. I predict that the pastor's defense of Louis Farrakhan will draw a lot of attention. Leaving that rich soil to others, I will concentrate for a moment on a less obvious statement chock-full of revealing assumptions.

Consider this telling exchange:

BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that millions [of] Americans, according to polls, still think Barack Obama is a Muslim?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It says to me that corporate media and miseducation or misinformation or disinformation, I think we started calling it during the Nixon years, still reigns supreme. Thirty some percent of Americans still think there are weapons of mass destruction. That you tell a lie long enough that people start believing it. What does the media do? "Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein. It sounds like Osama, Obama. That Arabic is a language. So that's why many people still think he's a Muslim. He went to a madrasah. What's a madrasah? I don't know, but I know it was one of those Muslim schools that teaches terrorism. The kind of I don't want to think, just tell me what to think mentality is why so many Americans still think that.

1. As for the Bill Moyers question, see "number three" above.

2. The "corporate media" as an agent of "miseducation or misinformation or disinformation."

Only "whackadoodles" (see the transcript for the joke) say "corporate media." Why? It takes a nearly lethal level of paranoia to see the mainstream media as an intentional instrument to keep the black man (or the brown man or the gentile man or the Arab man) down.

The fact that newsrooms are owned by big corporations is merely a convenient but irrelevant distraction. There has always been a tension between news divisions and corporate--and news has traditionally won out. We have talked about the mainstream media at length here, but in a nutshell the national press corps leans liberal, metropolitan, and "tolerant" in worldview. In general, they are elitist antiheroes. The mainstream media en masse tends to be incredibly skeptical about corporate America and any other institution that connotes conservative values, and the press corps carries a collective bias toward exposing perceived injustices against the lowly, improprieties on the part of the powerful, and scandals among the well-heeled.

Of course, the mainstream media is an agent of "miseducation or misinformation or disinformation," which is unfortunate and invidious, but the tragedy of our modern world is much broader than Reverend Wright seems to understand and much less conspiratorial. True, we are in a mess--but our serious dilemma is not the product of Nixonian-like (whatever that really means) collusion between the government and the corporations to keep us ill-informed and compliant.

3. "What does the media do? "'Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein.'"

Say What? What TV has this guy been watching? One of the most amazing stories of this election has actually been the vigilance with which the mainstream media has carefully avoided mentioning Barack Obama's middle name. Using his middle name somehow equals racism and dirty politics in this election cycle. This statement gets to the state of mind of Wright, viewing all evidence through a prism of predetermined conclusions.

4. "So that's why many people still think he's a Muslim. He went to a madrasah. What's a madrasah? I don't know, [affected voice] but I know it was one of those Muslim schools that teaches terrorism [end of mimicry]. The kind of I don't want to think, just tell me what to think mentality is why so many Americans still think that."

Americans are dumb and easily deceived.

In essence, on display in that last statement, Wright combines the scary paranoid style of American radicalism with the offensive patronizing style of the American intelligentsia. Not an appealing "two-for."

What's ahead? My guess is that his stand-up gig at the National Press Club on Monday and his upcoming speaking engagement at the NAACP (where they are going to expect the preacher) gets even worse.

What are these guys thinking?