Conservative philanthropy funded Media Research Center astonishingly claims news networks held collective tongues on the Wright affair

A recent report issued by the Media Research Center bemoans the lack of coverage of the Wright Affair by the major news networks; the Reverend is featured in Jerome Corsi's new best-selling book "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality"; headlines were made when a story appeared about a Wright-authored book that was to be published in October and followed by a book tour;  in a column in The Jewish Journal of greater Los Angeles, Rob Eshman suggested that Pastor Rick Warren should ask Obama - during the back-to-back interviews with Obama and Sen. John McCain on Saturday, August 16 -- how Obama's comment that "all Americans can live together in a diverse society," squares "with his loyalty to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons were often hateful and divisive"; and Lou Sheldon's Tradition Values Coalition website recently featured an article titled "Senator Barack Obama's Faith: Is It Black Liberation Theology?"    

For now, Team McCain appears to be too busy scoping out other avenues of attack against Obama to resurface the Rev. Wright tale: the "celebrity" ad tying Obama's persona to the celebrity of  Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton, created buzz; the ad in which Obama is portrayed as the "Anti Christ" was a startling reminder of Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series of bestselling apocalyptic novels; and then, there's the clever web-only ad called "Join The One's [Obama] Fan Club."

While the McCain campaign is otherwise involved, conservative media watchers still have Rev. Wright on their minds. In a recently released report by L. Brent Bozell III's Media Research Center, the conservative watchdog group claimed that coverage of the Rev. Wright affair on the major news networks was skimpy to say the least. That's right, the Rev. Wright affair: the one that occupied a good portion of the 24/7 news cycle on cable television's news networks (especially the Fox News Channel) for weeks; the one that basically pushed Obama to make his remarkable speech on race; the one that forced Obama to resign from his church and toss the Rev. Wright under bus; did not get enough coverage on the network news programs.  

The Media Research Center's (MRC) report is titled "Editing Reverend Wright's Wrongs: How the Networks Censored and Manipulated Jeremiah Wright Soundbites and Glorified Barack Obama's Race Speech."

Probably the number one conservative media watchdog group in the business, the MRC found that viewers watching "ABC, CBS, and NBC news broadcasts from the formal announcement of the Obama campaign on February 10, 2007 through July 15 [of this year]  ...  would have received a much more limited (and even censored) version of Wright's sermons."          

'The stench of black theology'

But the MRC's report is not the only item giving oxygen to Rev. Wright and his relationship with Obama. In mid-August, Wright made headlines again. A story in New York magazine - which spread about the internet and wound up as a lead story on Anderson Cooper's nightly program on CNN - maintained that Wright had written a book and would be on tour in October. The New York magazine story deduced its conclusion from a speech Rev. Wright gave in April to the NAACP in which he said that the audience could read about his story in a "book that will be out later this year." Both a spokesperson for Trinity United Church of Christ and Wright's daughter Jeri, denied that there were any plans for a Wright-penned book before the election.  

A more venal attack linking Wright to Obama - and both to "black theology" -- appeared in a WorldNetDaily piece titled `The stench of `Black Theology'," in which Eric Rush introduced the piece by hitting all the key GOP talking points: "He [Obama] has a friend [William Ayers] who bombed the Pentagon and other government buildings. He has another [Kenya's Raila Odinga] who murdered African Christians [according to Jerome Corsi's new book `The Obama Nation']. He has received endorsements and illegal campaign contributions from terrorists. Despite the veneer manufactured for him by his handlers and the press, he is so mired in far-left militancy he can barely conceal his disdain for America."

Rush, an African American columnist and author of several books including his latest, "Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation", "was the first to give national attention to the story of ... Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, initiating a media feeding frenzy," according to a  WorldNetDaily bio of Rush.  

Tying Obama to Wright, Rush concludes: "As scholars and genuine theologians (yes, as opposed to carny barkers and snake oil salesmen like James Cone and Jeremiah Wright) have determined, Black Liberation Theology is but one thing: a perversion of Christianity intended by design to woo blacks from faith and toward Marxist thought. `Blackness' is to be worshipped, as is the state - another intangible entity - in totalitarian regimes. Having established this deification of ethnicity, as far as the far-left puppet-masters go, the sky's the limit."

The Tradition Values Coalition's piece - illustrated in part by a graphic of Marx, Lenin and Mao and another of the black fist -- made the point of noting that "To understand Obama's legislative agenda, it is essential to understand the ideology espoused by his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright."

Why is this important? Because Wright served as Obama's pastor for more than 20 years as well as his mentor and spiritual advisor. It is unlikely that a person can sit in a pew of a church for 20 years and not understand or disagree with the ideology being promoted every week in Sunday sermons and in published materials distributed by a church.

According to Essence.com, Wright is currently teaching and ministering in Ghana. Nevertheless, as the presidential campaign hits its stride after Labor Day, expect the Rev. Wright to be resurrected time and time again by the Republican Party and its surrogates.  After all, it's the gift that keeps on giving.