In response to my enthusiasm for Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, someone pointed out to me that Rev. Wright has gone off the deep end a couple of times with respect to the HIV pandemic. He apparently believes that HIV was, or at least could have been, the creation of the US Government as a means of wiping out people of colour, and defended those remarks at the same Press Club gathering that I posted before.
After thinking about it a bit, I don't think such a thing is at all plausible. I think the Rev. has let paranoia get the better of him. If I had grown up in a country where the government had denied antibiotics to people of my ethnicity in order to see how syphilis affected them, I'd be a bit paranoid too.
This does not, however, greatly diminish my liking for Rev. Wright. Watch the following video, think about what Wright and his colleagues are trying to do, and then ask yourself how many religious or political leaders you can think of who have done something comparable on the HIV issue. Pope Benedict, would you care to swab? President Bush?
And just for the fun of it, here's Rev. Wright making more sense while smug, self-righteous, rich, white people sit around scolding him for it.
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