Commentary by Mark Steyn (excerpt only)
The song the Rev. Wright won't sing is by Irving Berlin,
a contemporary of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart, all the
sophisticated rhymesters. But only Berlin could have written without
embarrassment "God Bless America." He said it directly, unaffectedly,
unashamedly — in seven words:
"God Bless America
"Land that I love."
Berlin was a Jew and he suffered slights: He grew up in the poverty of
New York's Lower East Side. When he made his name and fortune, his
marriage to a Park Avenue heiress resulted in her expulsion from the
Social Register. In the 1930s, her sister moved in with a Nazi diplomat
and proudly flaunted her diamond swastika to Irving. But Berlin spent
his infancy in Temun, Siberia (until the Cossacks rode in and razed his
village) and he understood the great gift he had been given:
"God Bless America
"Land that I love."
The Rev. Wright can't say those words. His shtick is:
"God d... America
"Land that I loathe."
I understand the Ellis Island experience of Russian Jews was denied to
blacks. But not to Mr. Obama. His experience surely isn't so different
to Berlin's—except that Barack got to go to Harvard, his father was a
Kenyan, he spent his childhood in Indonesia and he ought to thank his
lucky stars he is running his office in Washington rather than Nairobi
or Jakarta. Instead, his whiney wife Michelle says her husband's
election as president would be the first reason to have "pride" in
America, and complains that this country is "downright mean" and that
she is having difficulty finding money for their daughters' piano
lessons and summer camp.
Between them, Mr. and Mrs. Obama earn $480,000 a year (not including
book royalties from "The Audacity of Hype," but they're whining about
how tough they have it to couples who earn 48 grand—or less. Yes, we
can. But not on a lousy half-million bucks a year.
God has blessed America, and blessed the Obama's in America, and even
blessed the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose bashing of his own country would
be far less lucrative anywhere else on the planet. The "racist" here is
not Geraldine Ferraro but the Rev. Wright, whose appeals to racial
bitterness are supposed to be everything President Obama will transcend.
Right now, it sounds more like the same-old same-old.
