All Wright, not right

From a distance the Democratic presidential race must seem more than passing strange.

The main political event of the past two weeks was a second round of national hand-wringing over Barack Obama's relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Viewed from half a world away I suspect this has looked downright bizarre. "What are the Americans doing?" you may have asked. "Didn't they beat each other up about that back in March?"

Yes, in fact, we did. And as someone who gets paid to watch (and write about) this stuff let me just say that the last few weeks have been far from inspiring - especially where we in the media are concerned.

For those who have had the good fortune to miss it, Wright is the former pastor of the Chicago church of which Obama has been a member for the last two decades. He first came to national attention when video snippets began circulating on the internet showing the pastor harshly denouncing the US government.

Obama countered in mid-March with a speech on race that was thoughtful and groundbreaking in equal measures. In it, he refused to break with Wright. Obama said that while he did not agree with everything the reverend had said, it must be understood that race continues to inform all aspects of the American experience.

He called on whites and blacks alike to try to see racial issues through the other's eyes, acknowledging both the progress America has made over the last 50 years and the distance we still have to travel.

After that, the controversy largely died down. The campaign continued but, outside right-wing talk radio, Wright ceased to be its obsessive focus. Polls showed the whole thing had done little harm to Obama's campaign.

And there things stayed until about two weeks ago when, suddenly, Wright was once again everywhere. This time, however, it was not grainy, years-old video clips but the man himself: sitting for interviews and giving two nationally-televised speeches.

The first of those speeches was to a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), one of the nation's oldest and most respected African-American political and civil rights organisations.

One might argue that at the NAACP gathering Wright was among family, addressing a more-or-less exclusively African-American audience.

True, but the speech was also broadcast live on national television, which made it something less than a private affair within the black community. In that speech Wright was dismissive of Obama, told a series of sneeringly mean-spirited jokes, and generally acted like a buffoon.

Self-important claim

The following day Wright was in Washington. Speaking before the National Press Club he seemed to go out of his way to bait his (mostly white) audience and made the wildly self-important claim that criticisms of him were attacks on the entire African-American religious tradition.

It is always a sign that a public figure has crossed the line into megalomania when he equates criticism of himself with criticism of everyone he claims to represent.

Within hours Obama called a news conference to break decisively with Wright, but the damage had been done. Unlike the first round of Wright-driven controversy, the latest act appears to have damaged the Illinois senator in the polls and among some party stalwarts.

What was really interesting, though, was the degree to which the media, particularly the 24-hour news channels, drove this story. Granted, the very theatrical Wright was a big part of it ("having the spotlight was obviously attractive to him," Obama rather wryly noted).

But it was remarkable to watch the media refuse to let go long after much of the country seemed to have gotten the point and wanted to get back to discussing more pressing issues, like the economy.

Over three decades in media it is a syndrome I have seen depressingly often. Every reporter in the country seems to want to be able to say he or she asked Obama about Wright - even if that means the candidate, essentially, answers the same question several hundred times while a host of other issues go unaddressed.

Reporters congratulate themselves on having "tested the candidates' mettle", while many ordinary voters conclude that the reporters, collectively, are as self-absorbed as Wright. It is not as though any of this does the Republic irreparable damage, though it is hard to see how any of it helps either.

Here, then, is the bottom line from this side of the Atlantic: Yes, these last two weeks were pretty tedious in terms of the media avoiding the campaign's real issues. Sadly, you might as well get used to it, because this aspect of American media culture is not likely to change, and November remains a long way off.

Gordon Robison is a journalist and consultant based in Burlington, Vermont & Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades.