President Barack Obama is in need of an umbrella — badly. He’s had to constantly shield himself these days from the thunderstorm of unjust ridicule, unfounded accusations and outright criminal lies from the organized battalion of racist fanatics hell-bent on Obama’s demise. This cadre of cunning kooks began firing missiles at the president’s politically neutral speech to students before Obama uttered a syllable. It effectively poisoned the potentially fruitful opportunity to enlighten students to education’s awesome potential power. Secondly, they’ve lied when they said Obama’s health care reform plan included death squads who would decide whose life would be terminated.
Meanwhile, the silence from African American ministers during the dastardly right-wing’s skullduggery is deafening and disheartening. While the funnel cloud of discontent and disparagement swirls about the White House, steadily toppling the wall of goodwill around Obama, black ministers have retreated to their refuge behind the pulpits.
Almost laughably, black preachers were tripping over each other’s wingtips to race down to the football stadium in Philadelphia and spew hollow rhetoric on behalf of convicted felon Michael Vick. Yet, as an avalanche of malicious misinformation tumbles over Obama, black ministers have chosen to sit in the stands of political discourse, remaining idle and mute as the president they elected gets pelted incessantly with politically damaging machinations.
The enemy’s ploy is working. Obama’s opponents realized the Adolf Hitler creed that even a lie repeated over and over, without reasoned and rational opposition, can eventually yield the desired results for their cause. Yet, black ministers remain silent.
It was widely reported that many black ministers were incensed — and are still smarting — about Obama’s denouncement and unceremonious dismissal of the fire-and-brimstone Rev. Jeremiah Wright from his inner circle last year. Fox News was just of one media outlet that reported many ministers belief that Obama bent to political pressure and metaphorically slew Wright in order to stop his historic campaign from hemorrhaging support. Other ministers, coupled with civic leaders, still harbor bitterness that the first African American president didn’t formulate a race-specific agenda that appeased them during the presidential campaign. Oh, they had a lot to say then.
Moreover, ultra-conservative ministers called support for Obama a “theological contradiction,” according to the Washington Times, because they are staunchly pro-life while Obama failed to publicly denounce abortions as biblical blasphemy.
Again, they had a lot to say then. But nothing now. The reasons for their public silence notwithstanding, it is imperative for black ministers to rise above their petty differences and petulant mind-set and support a president whose leadership is greatly imperiled.
–terry shropshire
