Teachers, Pastors and Presidential Candidates!

Written by Seuamuli Des Bentin
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Democrat Senator Barack Obama has finally decided to cut his links to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright after another of the retired Trinity United Church of Christ pastor’s performances where among other things, he accused the United States government of inventing the HIV virus to kill colored people. I don’t think Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a disturbed individual preaching hatred and racism, and his comments and sermons, which he describes as “descriptive” and not “divisive”, would have been only mildly interesting to the national security services, had he not just happened to be the pastor who married presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose Advisors and Spin Doctors are now flat out working on damage control. Wikipedia has pictures of Reverend Jeremiah Wright with President Bill Clinton in the White House and as a cardiopulmonary technician assigned to the medical team charged with the care of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. The good Reverend has some smarts and knows people in high places. I wonder though if Barack’s advisors would stoop so low as to draw a connection between former President Bill Clinton’s association with Reverend Wright and Barack Obama’s close race for the Democratic nomination with Bill Clinton’s wife Hilary Clinton? After all, the polls showed that Barack Obama slipped a few points after ABC News drew the connection between him and Reverend Jeremiah Wright who said that they should not be singing “God bless America but God Damn America.” My brother the Bureau of Statistics man stopped by for a couple or four and left me a couple of examples of what I would refer to as a bad and a good statistic. He believes that I must be the only boring no-life dork out of thousand Samoans who writes down all of my family’s daily expenses! And that was the good statistic. I tried to explain that it is easy to do if you haven’t got a lot of money to start with or 3% of the Annual Budget for unauthorized expenditure, but that probably didn’t fit into a standard statistical profile and he ignored me. The second statistic was quite disturbing though. According to the SBS man, there are two people children believe and listen to, and it isn’t their parents. Teachers and Pastors or church leaders are taken by young people as being incapable of being or of doing wrong. When he tried to tell one of his children that a question, and therefore the answer, in their homework was wrong, the child said that it couldn’t be because their teacher had told them that that was how it was done. There are a few correspondents who write letters to the local newspapers who wield their Bibles, or their knowledge and their interpretation of it, as justification and proof of their being morally superior. That’s “perfick” as that English television character would say. The only bit I find a bit disturbing about all this is the fact that I couldn’t understand a word of what they are going on about. So I learnt my Queen’s English in places so remote most New Zealanders haven’t even been to them or would even know where they are, but I think I can read and understand a good written yarn whether in English or Samoan. If these correspondents are Church leaders who, according to my SBS brother, are the second of the two professions our children listen to and believe, and I could not make neither head nor tail of what they are saying in their letters to the local newspaper, then we could be in for some problems. I like Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I can understand what he says and writes, which has helped me to decide that I do not agree with him. Another person of the cloth who wrote a letter to the Samoa Observer last week was easy to understand as well. “Father Nicholas C. Salesian of Don Bosco (and proud of it!)” wrote asking for an apology. Father Nicholas sounds like he has a Molotov cocktail-size chip on his shoulder regarding “mainstream colleges” who have “discarded” the students Don Bosco Technical Center have taken in. It is an unfortunate choice of words because coming from a Teacher and Church leader, the two professionals our children listen to and believe, it is confrontational and inaccurate. You are encouraging the view that the “mainstream colleges” did them wrong. Nobody did anybody wrong. They just made different choices. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama has a huge team working for him to try and win back any votes lost through the “rants” of his former Pastor and Church leader. The local head of the Catholic Church has made a public apology and taken ownership of the blame with the inter-school violence that shocked us a few days ago. It is a huge step in the right direction because the problem will never be solved if nobody takes ownership of it. Unfortunately, there are still people like Father Nicholas C. who insist on apportioning the blame out evenly between all the schools involved, the government, all the different religions and churches, parents, families and the local media. Let it go dude! It is a classic case of the saying, “E fa’akoese ae u gifo!” Have a nice one folks! Comments (1) Subscribe to this comment's feed Father Nicholas C. Salesian Forgot the scriptures... written by Jack, May 07, 2008 Ua galo i le faifeau le mau...E aua le taumafai e ave'ese le fasilaau i le mata o le isi, ae ave'ese muamua le oga fafie i lou mata. Father Salesian need to concentrate in cleaning his house first; so as other schools before looking outward..... Write comment Name Email Title Comment

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