is Wright right about racism?

The always excellent commentator David Sirota has a justifiably impassioned piece of polemic on this subject at http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/is-wright-right-about-racism.html; I'm recommending it to all and sundry, so why should LJers be exempt? Here's an extract:

Wright has long delivered fiery (and occasionally outrageous) sermons, to little fanfare. Now, though, a gang of thugs is inflicting a guilt-by-association blow to Obama by excoriating his spiritual adviser for three specific declarations.

Sean Hannity, Fox News' own George Wallace, turned a fire hose on Wright for his church's focus. "It is all about the black community," Hannity thundered, claiming that means Wright supports "a black-separatist agenda."

Pat Buchanan billy-clubbed Wright for saying, "God damn America." The MSNBC commentator, who avoided the draft, implied that Wright, a former Marine, lacks sufficient loyalty to country. Out of context, Wright's exclamation was admittedly offensive. But remember: It punctuated a speech about segregation. Buchanan, nonetheless, unleashed, deriding "black hustlers" and insisting descendants of those "brought from Africa in slave ships" owe whites a thank you. "Where is the gratitude?" he asked.

Fox's Charles Krauthammer berated Wright for saying the 9/11 attacks were "chickens coming home to roost." Krauthammer labeled the pronouncement "vitriolic divisiveness" despite our government acknowledging the concept of "blowback" — or retaliation — Wright was referencing. The CIA knows that when it supports foreign dictatorships, there can be blowback from radicals. While blowback is often immoral and undeserved, its existence is undisputed. Yet, Krauthammer alleged that Wright takes "satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents." . . .

. . . John McCain solicited the endorsement of John Hagee — the pastor who called the Catholic Church "a great whore." Similarly, according to Mother Jones magazine, Hillary Clinton belongs to the "Fellowship" — a secretive group "dedicated to 'spiritual war' on behalf of Christ." She is also friendly with Billy Graham, the reverend caught on tape spewing anti-Semitism. But while Wright's supposed "extremism" blankets the news, McCain and Clinton's relationships with real extremists receive scant attention.

Why is it "controversial" for one pastor to address the black community, racism and blowback, but OK for another pastor to slander an entire religion? Why is it news that one candidate knows a sometimes-impolitic clergyman, but not news that his opponent associates with an anti-Semite? Does the double standard prove the dominant culture despises a black man confronting taboos, but accepts whites spewing hate? Does the very reaction to Wright show he's right about racism?

Later: And go see http://al-zorra.livejournal.com/291233.html.

book #20

 The other day, while we were returning to our local library the hugely disappointing The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun (2003), by Robert Kaplow, my book #18 (see http://realthog.livejournal.com/32706.html), my eye fell upon a copy of Gregg Hurwitz's novel The Crime Writer (2007). Now, one of the reasons I've been partaking in the 50 Book Blogging Challenge (or whatever it's called) has been as a stimulus towards reducing some of the mountains of to-be-read books stacked around the house: the blogging doesn't actually increase the number of books I get through (in fact, it rather decreases it, for reasons that'll become manifestly deducible in a few words' time), but it does make sure, for reasons of embarrassment-avoidance, that far fewer of those books are crap -- potboiling thrillers and the like. The last thing I should be doing is borrowing extra books from the library.

 

And Gregg Hurwitz is of course a thriller writer. However, that in no sense means he's merely a writer of potboilers. I've read several of his thrillers over the years, and have been impressed by the way that, as well as delivering the requisite thrills, they're always about something. The Kill Clause, for example, was a sort of ethical exploration of the topic of capital punishment and summary justice. The Program contained much fascinating and authentic material about religious cults and indoctrination techniques. His additional foci of interest more than compensate for any occasional lapses in professional thriller-writer slickness he might commit (though they're very occasional, the plot yuck-moments and so on, they're definitely there).

 

So when I saw that The Crime Writer was not just a convoluted murder mystery/psychological thriller but also a novel about writing . . . well, I think I may be forgiven for scuttling straight to the checkout desk with the book and my library card in hand.

 

Successful crime novelist Andrew Danner wakes up in hospital to find that his ex-fiancée has been found murdered with himself collapsed on top of her, his prints on the knife -- the usual ingredients. He can remember nothing because he has been suffering a brain tumour, now extracted. In consequence of the tumour, he's judged to have committed the murder yet to be innocent through insanity. Released, he tries to find out if indeed he did commit the crime. Then another young woman, but completely unknown to him, is murdered in seemingly exactly the same way, and once again all the evidence points directly at him . . . except that this time he has an alibi that even the implacably hostile cops admit is cast-iron: he really couldn't have done it.

 

As Danner investigates further, aided by friends old and new, he begins to wonder if in effect he's now living a crime thriller of which he is also the author -- if he's begun to write himself the kind of life you find in novels but not in, er, real life.

 

This is an interesting metafictional conceit, and Hurwitz to a great extent pulls it off; further, the solution to the mystery -- as perhaps the very existence of the mystery -- depends on the protagonist's thriller-writing career. Hurwitz also has occasional fun writing in modestly different voices, indicative of different styles of thriller fiction. (If he was parodying individual authors here, I'm afraid I missed the references. Rightly, he makes sure his own voice dominates throughout, so it's not as if any references are clodhoppingly obvious.) As a thriller, too, and despite those occasional moments of plotting dubiety I've come to expect from this author, The Crime Writer works well; I found I was sneaking reads of it at all sorts of times when I should have been doing other things.

 

Where I do take issue, though, is with some of the cover quotes. The Crime Writer is a modestly and refreshingly ambitious thriller from one of the best of the current practitioners, and a pretty damn' good book . . . but it isn't anything more than that. Yet Dennis Lehane says of it (in part):

 

With The Crime Writer, Gregg Hurwitz has taken a quantum leap forward in the realm of American suspense literature.

 

Well, bollocks, frankly . . . unless Lehane is recognizing that a quantum leap is (to be pedantic -- moi, pedantic?) a very small leap indeed. And Robert Crais, in his eagerness to heap ridiculously exaggerated praise on the novel, manages to produce what must be one of the most offputting cover quotes of all time:

 

Gregg Hurwitz may well have created a brand-name franchise, and deservedly so.

 

If I'd spotted that quote in the library, the book might, even despite my high opinion of its author, have remained on the shelf.

 

Whatever, if you're looking for a really good thriller with an interesting amount of intellectual baggage to make sure it sticks in your mind for a while, The Crime Writer is very likely just the thing for you. I enjoyed it, and it's reminded me to keep my eye open for the Hurwitz novels I've not yet read.