Quite surprisingly, Howard Kurtz's panel on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" were far less impressed, in particular, former New York Times columnist William Safire who deliciously framed the interview as a "a loving conversation. And Bill Moyers is a liberal, was from the word go, and he was doing his best to make the most for Jeremiah Wright."
Wonderfully, Kurtz and his panel members, unlike seemingly all the rest of the currently fawning over Jeremiah media, agreed:
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: The media furor over Barack Obama's pastor finally seemed to have faded. This is, until Friday, when PBS aired an interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and there was fresh video for the endless loop that is television news.
On "Bill Moyers Journal," the liberal commentator sat down with the reverend, and it wasn't exactly an interrogation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL MOYERS, PBS: What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bites circulating as they did? REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT, TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST: I thought it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt that those who were doing that were doing it for some very devious reasons.
MOYERS: What is your notion of why so many Americans seem not to want to hear the Full Monty? And they don't want to seem to acknowledge that a nation capable of greatness is also capable of cruelty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Bill Safire, it was a very intelligent discussion about theology and black liberation theory, but in one hour Bill Moyers didn't manage to ask Reverend Wright about the lie, really, that the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill black people.
What did you make of that whole interview?
WILLIAM SAFIRE, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, it wasn't really an interview. It was a loving conversation. And Bill Moyers is a liberal, was from the word go, and he was doing his best to make the most for Jeremiah Wright.
Now, however, 40 minutes into that hour-long love feast, there was not a snippet, not a sound bite, but a nice minute and a half, two-minute take of his diatribe about America. And suddenly, for the first time you had any context how he was tearing down the country and saying right after 9/11 that we brought it on ourselves, we deserved it.
KURTZ: You set up my next question, because Reverend Wright has been complaining, and Obama himself this morning said that the sound bite simplified and caricatured Reverend Wright, that the snippets, the sound bites don't do justice to his message. So Bill Moyers played a whole thing having to do with the sermon right after 9/11, the next Sunday, about America's chickens coming home to roost.
And he talked about -- Wright talked about how America took this country by terror from the Indians, how we enslaved Africans, how we bombed Iraq and Sudan and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were, of course, in a death struggle with Japan. And supported state terrorism against Palestinians.
And after all of that, here is what Bill Moyers asked.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOYERS: When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they thought you were blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?
WRIGHT: The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Did you somehow fail to communicate?
JONATHAN CAPEHEART, THE WASHINGTON POST: No, I didn't. No.
I've gotten lots of e-mails from viewers and readers saying if you would only look at what he said in context, you'd really understand. And they would send me the video links. So I would watch. And I thought, he better hope that the rest of this doesn't come out.
You cannot say America was built on terror. And he also says terrorism. It's just not -- in a presidential context, anyone running for president of the United States cannot be associated with someone like that.
And unfortunately, you know, Mr. Safire brings up he do show more of the -- more of the sound bite, but it doesn't help Reverend Wright's argument. And it's unfortunate Bill Moyers didn't push him harder.
KURTZ: And Jeremiah Wright, when he complained about the way in which the media have covered him, he talked about the corporate-owned media. That would be you as a cog in the Time Warner machine.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTZ: And he seems to have the feeling there was an agenda here and the press has deliberately tried to make him seem like some crazy radical. But are we reporting his words?
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We are reporting his words. I'm sure if you're in his position it feels unfair because there's such small snippets. We do run that one "God damn America" over and over again. But the problem is, is that this is language that matters to people not just because it's inflammatory, but because so little is known as Barack Obama and who he is as a private person.
People are curious, who does he go to for advice? Who does he seek counsel from? And if this is who he's seeking counsel from, it gives them a little bit of information they think. So the media feels that it's responsible if it does report this, though he feels it's out of context.
KURTZ: Reverend Wright also took a little swipe at the "learned 'New York Times' journalist" -- that would be columnist Maureen Dowd -- who called him a whackadoodle.
Is that a major insult?
SAFIRE: That woke me up. That was a great word that Maureen Dowd found probably on the Internet.
Immediately, I did a little etymological research, and whackadoodle, perhaps rooted in whackamole, not rooted in, but similar to, which was a big thing about the surge three or four years ago. The earliest one I could find right away was a reference to Rodney Dangerfield in "Rolling Stone" in 2004, where they said he was whackadoodle, his voice. And here, you've got to remember that nobody ever went broke zapping the media. Look, this program, people are fascinated by it and riveted to it because...
KURTZ: That's why we do so well.
SAFIRE: Exactly.
KURTZ: And so it's a great target.
Let me just get Jonathan Capeheart in, in our remaining seconds.
That new "Newsweek" poll I referred to said that 41 percent -- I think these are registered voters -- have a less favorable opinion of Barack Obama because of Jeremiah Wright.
So, is this -- has the Moyers' interview -- and also, Wright is going to be at the National Press Club tomorrow. Is this -- are the media now justified in keeping this alive as a major controversy?
CAPEHEART: Oh, certainly. Now because of what you say. He gave the Moyers interview, he's speaking to the NAACP today, he's going to the National Press Club tomorrow, where he's also going to take questions from people in the media who aren't going to be as sympathetic as Bill Moyers.
Well, not according to the early reviews here and here, John.
