Wright or Wrong

Nation, I have to confide:  My husband and I were driving in the car when a radio news show sound-byted the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor.  Prepared by the appalled newscaster's build-up for something truly horrific, we both just sort of looked at each other, like, "Yeah, so?"

But then it became a national issue, and it sparked Obama's thoughtful speech, and  I kind of forgot about my initially underwhelmed response.  So how grateful I was today to be reminded of it by Gary Kamiya in his Salon article, "Rev. Jeremiah Wright Isn't the Problem."  Kamiya first writes:

The great shock so many people claim to be feeling over Wright's sermons is preposterous. Anyone who is surprised and horrified that some black people feel anger at white people, and America, is living in a racial never-never land. Wright has called the U.S. "the United States of White America," talks about the "oppression" of black people and says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11." Gosh, who could have dreamed that angry racial grievances and left-wing political views are sometimes expressed in black churches?

But then he goes on to the meat of his argument: 

Wright isn't the problem.  Stupid patriotism is the problem. . . .  Today, after five years of a catastrophic war driven by patriotic vengeance, it's still not acceptable to disturb the myth of eternal American innocence.

Moving into his main points, he holds accountable not patriotism itself (though my post-nationalist friends might take issue w/that), but stupid patriotism:  knee-jerk, blind, rhetorical hails to the chief, right or wrong.  Is it more important to wear a flag pin or to value the lives of others (national others in Iraq, class others in our own military) as we do our own?  The essay is short, nicely put together, and well worth a quick read; the Susan Sontag quotation alone is worth the price of admission.