Reverend Wright

You couldn't have missed the news stories last week about a proposed Republican ad campaign intended to bring back the "God damn America" speech of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Andrew Tobias pointed his readers to this column by Pat Cunningham in the Rockford (Illinois) Register Star.

I ask you:  Whose words were worse?  Jeremiah Wright’s, for inviting God’s punishment of America for its racism? Or Jerry Falwell’s, for saying that God had punished America [on September 11, 2001] —  and rightly so — for its liberalism?

Last Saturday, Mitt Romney delivered a speech at Liberty University, a school founded by Falwell, and said this of the late reverend:

In his 73 years of life, Dr. Falwell left a big mark…The calling Jerry answered was not an easy one. Today we remember him as a courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who never feared an argument, and never hated an adversary. Jerry deserves the tribute he would have treasured most, as a cheerful, confident champion for Christ.

I will always remember his cheerful good humor and selflessness.

There were no qualifications in Romney’s praise of Falwell, no hints of disapproval of Falwell having blamed America for Sept. 11, no effort to distance himself from the suggestion that God had punished America for not hewing to Falwell’s moral code.

 So, there you have it. Barack Obama has disowned the man who said “God damn America,” but Mitt Romney has praised the man who said God has rightly punished America with horrendous acts of terrorism.

And yet, some people want us to believe that Obama’s morality is the more questionable in all of this.

So why is Jeremiah Wright so much more upsetting than Jerry Falwell?

Oh, yeah. There's that race thing.