Wright Moves On Up
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 3/31/2008
Election '08: What could be worse than an Afro-Marxist preacher exhorting thousands of blacks to hate whites and swear off their middle-class materialism? One who does the exact opposite.
Barack Obama had hoped the retirement of his fire-breathing pastor would put the controversy to rest. But the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is retiring in luxury — with all the trappings of the white "middleclassness" he warns his flock to avoid.
Wright is forsaking South Side Chicago and the black ghetto for a gated golf club community in Tinley Park, an affluent suburb. The area has seen a boom in growth from mostly non-Hispanic whites buying upscale homes in new subdivisions like Wright's adopted Odyssey Club neighborhood, which boasts some of Tinley Park's largest homes and a mix of townhomes. It adjoins the Odyssey Country Club and golf course.
"It's really suburban sprawl," said Michael Mertens, Tinley Park's economic development director. "It's a lot of people wanting their own homes and more space."
Nothing wrong with that; it's the American dream. Except that Wright has condemned that dream (along with America) in sermons he's delivered to the 8,000 mostly black congregants of Trinity United Church of Christ. He says it's all part of a white conspiracy to get blacks hooked on middle-class materialism and separate them from the inner-city and their African roots.
He also preaches the gospel of "Black Liberation Theology," a false Christian doctrine promulgated by Marxist-leaning black writers of the 1960s that espouses "economic parity" and other collectivist claptrap.
The concept of practicing what you preach is apparently lost on Wright.
After decades of lecturing blacks to remain loyal to the black ghetto and eschew the white suburbs, he's now building a 10,340-square-foot mansion in the white suburbs. Among its amenities: an elevator, a rubberized exercise room and room for a future theater and indoor swimming pool.
Wright has made a lucrative career of convincing other blacks they can't succeed on their own. For decades, he's collected their alms in exchange for a steady diet of bitterness and resentment.
Shouting "God damn America" for its treatment of blacks, Wright got his parishioners hooked on misplaced anger in the South Side so he could cash out in Tinley Park.
Perhaps this is "sharing in the prosperity," as Obama has so eloquently rephrased redistribution of income. Funny how those who demand economic parity end up taking the biggest share.