Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In the May 19 issue of National Review magazine Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Policy Center, puts some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s wilder flights of fancy into their proper context, and finds the context as disturbing as the statements themselves. Far from being in the mainstream of the black American church, Chicago’s United Trinity Church of Christ, Kurtz writes, is “the most radical black church in the country.” The “theology” of the church has been lifted from the writings of James Cone, “the founder and leading light of black-liberation theology” and the author of Black Theology & Black Power . “Wright acknowledges” Cone’s work as the basis of Trinity’s perspective, Kurtz writes, “and Cone points to Trinity as the church that best exemplifies his message…Cone’s theology is the first and best place to look for the intellectual content within which Writes views took shape.” Presently the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Un...

In the midst of a report on Ross Perot’s distaste for John McCain, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek reports that “Perot isn't a Hillary hater, but he's not a fan either, relating the bumper sticker he received that reads: ‘Monica Lewinsky's Ex-Boyfriend's Wife for President.’” The New York Time’s anti war push Writing in National Review Online a few years ago, Stanly Kurtz opened a window on the mindset of New York Times owner Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr.: “Pinch Sulzberger was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, ‘the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life.’ If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, ‘I would want to see the American get shot. It's the other guy's country.’ Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn...