Father Michael Pfleger, the priest of the Chicago’s famous largely African-American Catholic Church St. Sabina’s, has been called the greatest white black preacher in America. Here, last Sunday, he did some major signifying as the guest preacher at, yes, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, wherein he makes some serious ugly fun of Hilary Clinton as an entitled white broad.Naturally, Barack Obama has been taxed with those remarks, and in response has therefore issued a statement saying he is “deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn’t reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.” Significantly enough, Pfleger had the wherewithal to issue an apology for his performance. (Rev. Wright, not so much.)
One of the fabulous things about Chicago is the special connection between some inner-city Catholics and African-Americans. Think about the Blues Brothers. It’s a story about a couple of black-music-crazed white ethnic Catholic orphans, who take America on a tour of the blues by way of putting together their mixed-race band to save their hideous Catholic orphanage. It’s the kind of Catholic love affair with black culture that Fr. Pfleger displays, and which (so far as I know) can’t be found anywhere else in America. Poor Obama must disavow it. The rest of us can enjoy it.