The Wright Stuff

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is starring in numerous YouTube videos. He's also featured in an attack ad that the North Carolina Republican Party is threatening to air in the run-up to the May 6 primary election.

On Friday, Wright will take a star turn in his first interview since he burst on the nation's TV screens and computer monitors. The show has released excerpts from his interview with Bill Moyers:

REVEREND WRIGHT:
The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.

When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a "wackadoodle."

It's to paint me as something: "Something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with this country...for its policies. We're perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them." That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.

BILL MOYERS:
What do you think they wanted to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT:
I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate.

They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prison ministry. They know nothing about our food ministry. They know nothing about our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try to do as a church and have tried to do, and still continue to do as a church that believes what Martin Marty said, that the two worlds have to be together. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morning but in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.

BILL MOYERS:
What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bites circulating as they did?

REVEREND WRIGHT:
I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.