Is Jeremiah Wright "King-like?"

Up until now, I hadn't come across anything suggesting Obama's former pastor might be similar to Dr. King in his ministry. NorthJersey.com has an item up that suggests that very thing.

I imagine different people will have different opinions on this, personally I don't buy it. While there is yet progress to be made, I have a hard time believing Wright carries on in the tradition of MLK given that some genuine progress is made. Dr. King certainly may have grew angry over the struggle at times. But I don't think his words were ever couched in the seemingly angry message of Wright.

Feel free to disagree.

IN THE LAST WEEK, the hysteria over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Chicago-based Trinity United Church of Christ, of which presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is a congregant, has reached fever pitch.

The senator's opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, has sought to portray Wright as an unpatriotic racist and, by association, plant seeds of doubt in the minds of white voters, some of whom were already wavering in their opinion of the junior senator from Illinois.

This calculated attack on Wright is one of the most deplorable incidents in recent presidential politics. So I come to praise him and account for the history that gave birth to his ministry.

Critics of Wright reveal the deep-seated ignorance that has been at the root of our nation's inability to have an honest conversation on race. Wright's detractors are among the same individuals who will embrace aspects of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s teachings that provide them shelter from taking account of their own racial animus, while ignoring the late civil rights leader's pointed critique of our nation. It is why the more hopeful passages of King's "I Have a Dream" speech are remembered, while those that indict the nation for its treatment of blacks and embrace of Jim Crow are conveniently forgotten.