Rev. Jeremiah Wright Gives God the Glory and the Devil the Blues
Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speech before the NAACP tonight was a turning point, as was his interview on Friday with Bill Moyers. Whatever impressions were left with observers after the infinite looping of the 30-second sound bites, anyone watching Friday and tonight cannot possibly be left with the same impression. From what I’m seeing on Twitter and in blog comments, many are outraged at how twisted the story was told by the mainstream media outlets.
That isn’t to say that everyone will have a favorable impression. They won’t and will be vocal in their opposition, particularly if they were one of the groups Dr. Wright corrected in his speech tonight. But if they were listening, “putting their head down on the tracks and really listening, they heard the superliner approaching“. Its name was Different. Different, not deficient.
Steve Gillmor’s discussion on The Gillmor Gang about Microsoft Mesh offers an interesting illustration of how this place called the Internet is also moving toward celebrating and integrating differences, synchronizing devices, data, identity, and access in one place, accessible by many, cross-platform, mobile, social, living, interacting, and extensible.
Just as Mesh offers Macs, PCs, iPhones and Blackberries access and transport, so does a paradigm shift from a divided, authoritative, and uncommunicative society into a society where we embrace differences for what they are — differences — which in turn opens a new avenue of growth into a place where new, exciting, innovative, connective things happen.
Dr. Wright wisely connected us all through the music bridge, the one where 6/8 time can be counted as a march or where it is counted as a spiritual, both equally inspiring for different times and places. Then he took us to another place where drums beat new, syncopated rhythms, where differences are counted simply as differences, neither bad nor better, just different.
Just as there are fans and critics with regard to Microsoft, Dr. Wright will also have the same. His message will be panned by some, embraced by others. Those who reject it outright without giving him the benefit of an honest hearing accept their fear as reality, are comfortable there, and will still be running Windows 2000 in 2010. That’s their choice, but what they may discover is that fear is the one place that is clearly deficient and dissatisfying.
Some will continue to focus on personality rather than message, just as many of the commenters on the Gillmor Gang have. Rather than hear the message and learn from it, they chose to remain focused on the wrong target, to their detriment. However, on the Twitter stream yesterday, twice as many responded with the call to explore the change, eager to begin the discovery of how best to weave the mesh in a way that’s good for the wider population. And from those responders, came 5 more to each of them via invitations, weaving a new message toward any and all ready to receive it.
Microsoft isn’t God and neither is Jeremiah Wright. But they are bringers of a larger message, one that proposes to overcome the devil of missed communication.
When the Devil sings the blues, we’re on a track to better places.
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