THE SO-CALLED AMERICA-HATER OBVIOUSLY DOESN'T HATE AMERICA THAT MUCH

If I utterly despised America and thought white people were irredeemably racist, I'd make a principled decision to reject a white president's invitation to the White House. (And don't tell me that no one refuses to go to the White House when invited -- remember the poets who refused Laura Bush's invitation to a White House poetry symposium, not out of hatred of America but out of a patriotic outrage at the rush toward war in Iraq.)

Or I'd show up and make a statement, like Eartha Kitt in the Vietnam years:

Eartha Kitt, the singer, stunned other guests at a White House luncheon today when she angrily told Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson that American youth was rebelling because of the Vietnam war....

"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she said. "They rebel in the street. They will take pot and they will get high. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

A pale Mrs. Johnson later rose and looked directly at Miss Kitt, who leaned against a podium in the yellow walled Family Dining Room....

But it appears that the Big Scary Black Guy America Hater Reverend Jeremiah Wright did neither of these things when he was invited to the White House. In fact, he seems delighted to be there:



During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.

Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton....

So I guess the Big Scary Black Guy America Hater Reverend Jeremiah Wright doesn't really have an unquenchable hatred for America or white people after all. Maybe white America really doesn't really have to lock its doors when he's around.