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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Jeremiah Wright on Obama

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 18 2010, 10:30 AM ET Comment

From the AP:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is "toxic" to the Obama administration and that the president "threw me under the bus." 

 In his strongest language to date about the administration's 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored. 

 "No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am 'toxic' in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.

This really strikes me as non-story. I have a well known beef against treating private and public correspondence in the same manner. Moreover, I don't think this language is any stronger than Wright's used in the past. He once blamed his distance from Obama on "them Jews." He did that publicly.

Lastly, I don't even think the content is particularly new. Are we really surprised that Wright feels like he was thrown under the bus?


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