Bill Moyers 'whitewashes' Jeremiah Wright

It's stunning to watch a man flat-out lie to himself, in full public view. (video)

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, HuffPo is making the most it can of Moyers' interview. The post, by Dave Winer, asks 'why it is so quiet' after Moyers' interview. His conclusion: Because everyone agrees with it.

The 'sphere is NOT in 'quiet agreement' with Moyers. Winer and HuffPo either have blinders on, or are lying. Silence? Among the many blogs who have spoken out in the aftermath of this interview: Squirrel Nut Unzippered, Malkin, Crittenden, Macsmind, Illinois Review, Restrained Radical, Freedom Eden, Althouse, and Protein Wisdom (Protein was the only dissenting voice noted by Winer), and Sundries.

The New York Times also takes a brief, closer look at Wright's 'explanation'. Check the comments.

Quite a few sycophantic posts sprung up immediately after the Moyers piece, damning any and all critics of Wright as 'racist bigots'. Since Obama was obliged to condemn Wright and strongly disassociate from him a short time later, not one of them has been able to explain how Obama himself became such a 'racist' that he would condemn this noble man. (Mostly, they've decided they're now bored with the issue and prefer to move on.)

AND: Some Googlers arrived here via "Bill Moyers lie", apparently a popular search subject.

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Clearly, the Jeremiah Wright thing is going to stick with Obama as long as he is in the race. Much of this is Obama's own doing. Recognizing this, Obama's supporters prevailed upon PBS to roll out this howler of an episode of Bill Moyers' Journal.

Moyers declares that Wright's controversial remarks were 'taken out of context'. They're not, of course, and are easily found in their entirety on YouTube and other sources. (Searching 'Jeremiah Wright' on this site will offer some links.) In fact, it's the clips Moyers uses that are cherrypicked.

Except for one, that is - the 'God Damn America' clip that is Obama's biggest problem. Moyers has no choice but to run it, but only as an opportunity for Wright to explain it away. (Which he does at great length, drawing nauseating comparisons with Martin Luther King. Unfortunately, King is no longer alive to repudiate them.)

Wright is 'whitewashed' in every sense of the term here. Every effort is made to portray him as a misunderstood (or deliberately vilified by unidentified, no doubt 'racist', culprits), 'mainstream' preacher. Moyers tries to camoflauge Wright's cheap racebaiting with the high-sounding but theologically-empty term 'black liberation theology'. (Moyers, who has done shows on theological issues before, knows this is week-old tripe he's peddling, but is far past caring. Playing fully to his leftist audience, he refers to God as 'she'.) Gone are Wright's 'native' African clothes, gone are the cadence, the bogeymen, and the loaded questions he used to rouse his congregation. There's not a single tough question from Moyers, but that's not what he's here for. Moyers purpose is to to tee up the ball, and to cheer Wright on while he swings away. This, he does splendidly. Moyers puts on a relentlessly cloying performance, complete with breathless assent and worshipful body-language. The well-choreographed act is only slightly less credible than Ed McMahon pitching products on the old Tonight Show.

This PR puffery is a balm for already-faithful Obama fans. To everyone else, it will either mean nothing or offend their sense of fair play. It's fairly incredible that anyone would even attempt this kind of baldfaced fraud - didn't Moyers see what happened when Hillary tried to lie about sniper fire in Bosnia? This is the age of YouTube, and anyone would wants to see Wright beyond the hothouse environment of this cynical pose can do so.

Moyers will change few minds about Wright - though he might about himself. It's impossible to defend this propaganda, whose sole aim is pandering to his mostly-liberal audience and sponsor base.

Wright cut many moral corners over the years to build his 'successful' all-black church. Considering his political ambitions, Obama should have disowned him years ago. But Obama actually believes that he's so above-the-fray he can have it both ways. His ego will be his downfall, and his attempts to 'explain away' his demagogic preacher are doomed to fail.

As far as Moyers goes, from here on we'll just change the channel whenever his face appears. Ugh.

MORE: The whitewash job quickly backfires on Obama and Moyers.

RELATED: It's not only Moyers and Wright who'll lie about theology for political advancement.

WRIGHT'S SERMONS are riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods that support the points he wishes to make. Here's one example. Obviously, Moyers didn't bring up anything like this.

The elephant in the room, of course, is this: If Wright's merely been 'misunderstood', why did Obama make a major speech denouncing him? Wright explains this away by saying a politician and a preacher come from 'different places', which is of course no explanation at all. Moyers does not go there, either. Sorry, but we'll follow Obama's lead, and denounce Wright's 'teachings', rather than dress them up as something they're not, as Moyers has done.

AND: This video says it all. (from Instapundit)