From In These Times:
Views > April 24, 2008 > Web Only
Bill Moyers Interviews Rev. Jeremiah Wright
By Bill Moyers
Excerpts from Jeremiah Wright’s first interview with a broadcast journalist since the controversy over his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama are posted below.
The interview will air on Bill Moyers Journal on Friday, April 25 at 9 pm on PBS.
(Check local listings at www.pbs.org/moyers.)
Excerpt 1
REVEREND WRIGHT:The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.
When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly
over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That’s not a failure to
communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they
want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist
from the New York Times called me, a “wackadoodle.”
It’s to paint me as something: “Something’s wrong with me. There’s nothing
wrong with this country…for its policies. We’re perfect. Our hands are free. Our
hands have no blood on them.” That’s not a failure to communicate. The message
that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those
sound bites want to communicate.
BILL MOYERS:What do you think they wanted to communicate?
REVEREND WRIGHT:I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic,
that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at
Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint,
hint, hint? That’s what they wanted to communicate.
They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prison
ministry. They know nothing about our food ministry. They know nothing about
our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try to do as a church and
have tried to do, and still continue to do as a church that believes what Martin
Marty said, that the two worlds have to be together. And that the gospel of Jesus
Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message
on a Sunday morning but in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.
BILL MOYERS:What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound
bites circulating as they did?
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