I had a feeling it was coming, that’s for sure – and my intuition did not disappoint. Late yesterday while I was at home trying to get caught up on some work I’d brought from the office, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright called:
Tom: Hello?
Wright: Who is this? Is this Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, it is. With whom am I speaking?
Wright: This is Jeremiah Wright.
Tom: Reverend Jeremiah Wright, formerly pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago?
Wright: Yeah, that’s me. Do you know who I am?
Tom: Sure, Reverend, I reckon everybody in the United States knows who you are – at least since about six weeks or eight weeks ago. How can I help you?
Wright: Michelle told me that my name came up in a conversation with you about a week ago.
Tom: Michelle Obama, you mean?
Wright: Yeah.
Tom: I’m afraid you must have misunderstood, Reverend. Your name was never mentioned.
Wright: She said you talked to Barack about church. You did talk to Barack Obama, didn’t you?
Tom: Yes, and I mentioned the philosopher Alonzo Church, not “church attendance,” “going to church,” “church denomination,” or anything else like that.
Wright: Alonzo Church?
Tom: He was a twentieth century philosopher. His specialty was logic, and he was a pioneer in the development of modern computers.
Wright: What in the hell were you talking to my boy Barack about somebody like that for?
Tom: It was part of a series of questions I was asking Senator Obama in order to evaluate him for elitism.
Wright: And why the [expletive] were you doing that?
Tom: Because his wife Michelle, who had called me, just as you have, Reverend, was concerned about accusations certain people had made to the effect that Senator Obama is an elitist.
Wright: Barack Obama is not an elitist!
Tom: You are absolutely correct, sir, he most certainly is not. I don’t know whether Michelle told you this, but the senator’s performance during my test confirmed, beyond a shadow of doubt, the total absence of any elite outlooks, points of view, tendencies or capabilities. As I told Michelle, her husband is as common as dirt. Despite having attended not one, but two Ivy League schools, there isn’t an elite bone in his body, an elite corpuscle in his blood, and nay, there is not one single, solitary elite thought in his entire mind. The bottom line, Reverend, is that Barack Obama is a paragon of mediocrity, through and through.
Wright: Mediocrity? Why, you make that sound almost good, the way you put everything just then.
Tom: Well, in the Obama campaign organization about ten days ago, a solidly mediocre Barack Obama was the object of everyone’s fevered prayers, Reverend. He needed to win as many Democratic convention delegates as possible in the Pennsylvania primary, remember?
Wright: Yeah, and Michelle told me you said he was going to win Pennsylvania!
Tom: I said, “With those qualifications, he’s a cinch to carry Pennsylvania.” By which I meant, “It should be easy for him to carry Pennsylvania,” not “I am certain he will carry Pennsylvania.” In any case, I would point out two important salient facts – first Obama held Hillary Clinton to a net gain of something on the order of ten delegates; and, second, I was never paid for that consultation and therefore anybody who complains about the analysis I provided has a lot of nerve. But then, come to think of it, I’m talking to the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright at the moment, aren’t I?
Wright: You can bet your miserable, freckled, sunburned pink hide on that, whitey!
Tom: Yeah, okay, right – so, we have established that not a word concerning you has ever passed between me and Senator Obama. Is there anything else?
Wright: I heard you’re supposed to be the smartest honky in Washington.
Tom: Sometimes some people describe me in that manner, Reverend. Rest assured, I would never say something like that myself.
Wright: Oh, of course not. You were raised to be modest and well mannered, I can tell that, just like all the other members of the so-called white master race who are currently dragging me and my parishioner through the mud to further your centuries-old, ongoing and convert conspiracy against the black African diaspora that your ancestors so callously and cruelly kidnapped from the nurturing bosom of our motherland, to sell us into slavery and line your silk pockets with ill-gotten gold, reaped from the blood and sweat of the chained and flogged captive Negro!
Tom: Reverend Wright, I hate to tell you this, but all of my ancestors except my paternal grandmother arrived here from Italy after 1900, or are descended from people who did, and, furthermore, my paternal grandmother’s family were New England abolitionists from Connecticut, and, moreover, her great uncle was killed fighting Confederate cavalry at the Battle of Shiloh.
Wright: Always trying to wriggle out of it, aren’t you? Just because your ancestors didn’t own slaves, or even if some of them were against slavery, or even if some of them died fighting slavery during the Civil War, that don’t mean nothin’, and you know it! You’re all still part of black people’s problems, not part of their solutions!
Tom: Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinions, Reverend. But before I wish you a good evening, I should like to point out that, if you want to help Senator Obama become President, the best thing you could do would be to take a holy vow of silence until November fifth.
Wright: Why November fifth?
Tom: Because November fifth is Guy Fawkes Day, and that’s a good day for loud, incoherent noises.
Wright: I get the sneakin’ suspicion, you are tryin’ to denigrate me.
Tom: To de-nigrate someone such as yourself, Reverend, would be impossible, and, regardless of circumstance, I never take it upon myself to attempt the impossible.
Wright: Oh, really? And I suppose you don’t believe that the United States government invented the AIDS virus and unleashed it on the black community in an organized, covert program of racial genocide?
Tom: Of course not, Reverend. I know the United States government all too well. What you describe simply could not have happened.
Wright: Couldn’t have happened, you say? Why not?
Tom: Because there is no way the United States government could invent and execute anything so clever or so imaginative. The only United States government that could do something like what you describe is the one you see on television or in the movies, and believe me, the real United States government is nothing at all like that – the real United States government is populated by ignorant, bumbling, incompetent, half-witted nincompoops, not by an army of Jack Ryans.
Wright: Who’s Jack Ryan?
Tom: A rough, tough all-American retired Marine with a Ph.D. and an IQ of three thousand.
Wright: Sounds like a white [expletive] version of me.
Tom: If you say so, Reverend.
Wright: Irish?
Tom: Made up by an Irish momma’s boy named Clancy, Reverend. Pure fantasy, and considerably less plausible than SuperFly, actually.
Wright: “SuperFly” – now there was a movie worth watching.
Tom: If you say so, Reverend. Anyway, the bottom line is, spouting incredible, undocumented conspiracy theories from the pulpit may pack them in Sunday morning on the south side of Chicago, but having that kind of crazy stuff associated with a serious presidential campaign confers no particular advantage to the candidate. But don’t get me wrong, Reverend – I’ve listened to some of your recent speeches, and parts of them were quite accurate, factually speaking, such as that part of your address to the National Press Club where you expounded on music theory. All of that was completely accurate, like the part about the European and African interpretations of the six-eight time signature or the differences in the way that Americans of European and African cultures interpret the internal major pulse emphasis in measures of four-four. And I particularly enjoyed your demonstrations of the extremely different ways that black and white football marching bands interpret the works of John Philip Sousa.
Wright: There’s no need to start talkin’ like a professor, you know. I was just trying to explain why ofays like you can’t dance.
Tom: Sure.
Wright: You mean, you ain’t gonna argue with me when I say white folks can’t dance?
Tom: No point in it. We can’t.
Wright: Well, don’t that make you feel ashamed?
Tom: Nope.
Wright: Incapable?
Tom: Uh-uh.
Wright: Untalented?
Tom: Not at all.
Wright: Inferior?
Tom: Not generally so, no.
Wright: And that’s ‘cause you’re white, that’s why, isn’t it? Don’t matter what you do, does it, as long as you be white. Like I said about Johnson, when he gave a speech he was always sayin’ “my fellow merkins,” like that…
Tom: Well, a merkin is a pubic wig, so maybe LBJ was, in fact, simply addressing his fellow merkins. I mean, they didn’t call the man El BJ for nothing, you know.
Wright: “El BJ?” That some kind of Spanish thing?
Tom: Tex-Mex, anyway.
Wright: But my point is that nobody made fun of the way he talked, even though they are always making fun of the way black people talk.
Tom: First of all, plenty of white people made fun of the way LBJ talked, and the way Kennedy talked, too…
Wright: Kennedy? Who dared make fun of the way John Fitzgerald Kennedy talked?
Tom: A guy named Vaughn Meader, for one. He made millions poking fun at the way Kennedy talked.
Wright: Oh yeah, Mr. Know-It-All from Inside the Beltway? What about Amos and Andy?
Tom: That was the most popular radio program in history, Reverend, as well as being the very first episodic situation comedy in any electronic medium. Everything from Fibber McGee and Molly, through The Honeymooners, right on up to The Simpsons is nothing more than a derivative of that show.
Wright: Well, I don’t think bein’ an innovative work of mass entertainment excuses Sapphire yellin’ “George Stevens, what you been doin’ now?” like she did, practically every time, right before the really funny part of the show. And besides, if what you say is true, then in addition to bein’ a big insult to black people, Amos and Andy was also another example of The Man rippin’ off our culture to make huge profits and givin’ us absolutely nothing.
Tom: I swear, Reverend, I never saw a dime of that money.
Wright: Huh! Isn’t that just what all you crackers say?
Tom: You know, Reverend, when you stated that American foreign policy is why we ended up being attacked by terrorists on 9/11, I can’t say I disagreed with that. A person would have to be a complete moron to think 9/11 could have happened if America’s Middle East policy wasn’t controlled from inside our government by a powerful Jewish lobby and its sympathetic agents. But having the pastor of Senator Obama’s congregation shouting that from the rooftops won’t help get him elected President, even if, unlike most of the stuff you are noted for, it isn’t a raving paranoid delusion but the actual state of affairs instead.
Wright: So I shouldn’t be speaking truth to power, is that what you’re saying, you blue eyed devil? That I should keep my big black mouth shut so Obama won’t have to spend his valuable television time explaining me to some Howdy Doody lookin’ mother [expletive] like Sean Hannity?
Tom: I don’t think Senator Obama could ever explain you, himself or even how many beans make five to somebody like Sean Hannity, Reverend.
Wright: And whose fault is that?
Tom: Well, what if somebody said that centuries of foreign Anglo Saxon British oppression by the United Kingdom is the reason why pig-headed Mick bigots like Sean Hannity drag around on their knuckles making impolite remarks about people like you?
Wright: Why, I’d denounce it for the shallow, ridiculous and poisonous demagoguery it obviously is, of course.
Tom: But it’s okay for you to endorse Louis Farrakhan? A man who says “It appears that there is a genocidal plan against black people,” “Hitler was a very great man,” and “”White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet,” and urges the establishment of a separate black nation inside the United States? And how is that different from white supremacists in Idaho who want to do the same thing, only with their favorite color of person?
Wright: Hey, look, everybody knows black people believe they come from God, white people think they come from monkeys and Asians figure they’re so smart, they must have invented themselves. Brother Louis, he’s just riffin’ on that kind of stuff.
Tom: I disagree, Reverend, it simply is not the case that “everybody knows” those things, any more than “everybody knows” there aren’t any black hockey players because “black people are missing a bone in their feet you need to stay upright on ice skates.”
Wright: See? There you go, typical white man – sayin’ black folks are deficient, when the truth is, we’re just different!
Tom: Ah, Reverend, this may come as a bit of a shock, but there are the same number of bones in black peoples’ feet as there are in white peoples’.
Wright: No [expletive]?
Tom: Seriously. Same relative sizes, all attached to the same tendons, muscles and joints, all run by the same nerves. No difference at all.
Wright: Oh, I get it – yeah, just what I’d expect from some sneaky Caucasian, tryin’ to twist things around, all sneaky Caucasian like; all up in that sneaky Caucasian thing you sneaky Caucasians do – you’re saying that black people are too stupid to play ice hockey, aren’t you?
Tom: No, quite to the contrary – I’m saying black people are too smart to play ice hockey. Because if ever there was a sport designed to be played by and for idiots, ice hockey is it.
Wright: Well, amen to that, then, and [expletive] that lily white National Honky League and their [expletive] ofay Stanley Cup – and [expletive] [expletive] Stanley, too, whoever that mother [expletive] [expletive] sucking freckle face Howdy Doody cracker was.
Tom: So, as you can see from our conversation, Reverend, not all white people are the same, and many of us actually like black people.
Wright: You do?
Tom: Sure. But you have to realize, sir, that going off the deep end and yelling “God damn America,” and describing this country as “The United States of White America,” are not constructive things, whether one of your congregation is running for president of the United States or running for president of the PTA.
Wright: Oh, [expletive], not that again! Look, those quotations were taken completely out of context, okay?
Tom: What, like, you’re saying you meant the phrases “God damn America” and “The United States of White America” in a good way?
Wright: Well… yeah, of course. They were parts of sermons I gave, and the people who are going off, you know, [expletive] and moaning about a couple of sound bites, playing them over and over again – those people never heard those things as part of the entire sermon. And you really have to hear what I said all around those two things, you know what I mean?
Tom: Yeah, I think I do. You maintain that you intended the utterances “God damn America” and “The United States of White America” to express, elaborate and expand in some positive semantic field, and that this is readily evident through a thorough hermenuitic and semiotic deconstruction of the unabridged text and complete canonical formation of your original ideation, within the systemic boundaries of the entire set and total setting of the mutually consistent schema of an isoepistemological symbolic representation manifold, proliferated in the exhaustive, eclectic and extended environment where it occurred. Correct?
Wright: Okay, like that, sure. What you said.
Tom: Fine. Can you describe one single, plausible instance of a context, capable of passing the laugh test, in which the phrases “God damn America” and/or “The United States of White America” could conceivably be interpreted in a positive manner, subsequently describing the hypothetical person who would perceive that positive meaning and explaining how that positive meaning would be perceived?
Wright: Look, Mr. Collins, if you were talking like that to my boy Barack, then it certainly ain’t no wonder that he’s out there saying he don’t know me, don’t follow me no more, didn’t think I said things he heard me say, and talkin’ about how he gave me the benefit of the doubt…
Tom: Reverend, as God is my witness, I have never said a word to Senator Obama concerning you or your speeches. Frankly, it sounds to me as if you are casting about trying to find somebody besides the true culprit to blame for him rejecting you.
Wright: True culprit? And who might that be, Mr. Collins?
Tom: Is there a mirror in the room you are calling from?
Wright: Yes.
Tom: Go look in it.
Wright: Mr. Collins, it seems that I’m not producing a reflection. How did you know that was going to happen?
Tom: I didn’t. Try moving a couple of steps to the left. What do you see?
Wright: Nothing. I’m looking at the wall.
Tom: Okay, now try moving four steps to the right.
Wright: Oh, yeah, there I am. What a relief! Um, so, what am I supposed to see in the mirror?
Tom: Never mind, Reverend.
Wright: Ah, do you think all this [expletive] means I won’t get invited to the Inauguration?
Tom: Don’t worry about it – I sort of doubt I’m going to get invited, either.