When we hear conservatives questioning the President's birthplace, or what he learned from his former pastor in Chicago, let's not make a mistake: it is all about blackness, and any pride he may take in such blackness. Case in point?
This week's principal example, a now-failed proposal from a conservative super-PAC called Character Matters to use Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a campaign against President Obama four years after anyone last cared about Rev. Wright. It only got explicitly racial when one phrase, "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln," was spotted in its proposal. Yes, that's more hilarious than insulting, and it makes perfectly clear that they had little idea of what they were talking about. The same goes, frankly, for the black church that Rev. Wright led at one point, or the black liberation theology that he preaches. Today, Melissa will delve into that with Rev. Otis Moss III, the current senior pastor of Rev. Wright's former church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
We'll also try to make sense of the Republican passage in the House of a watered-down Violence Against Women Act that only protects certain women, and bring you up to date on today's G8 summit at Camp David. We'll use that occasion to launch a conversation about the financial upheaval in Greece, Italy and Spain -- and how that might predict our economic future here in America. Melissa will also have something to say about this week's news in the Trayvon Martin case, and about one casualty of Hurricane Katrina that she feels doesn't deserve to survive. (That you won't want to miss.)
Aside from Rev. Moss, our guests will include:
- Ezra Klein, columnist and blogger for the Washington Post. Ezra, also an msnbc policy analyst, chatted with Melissa last night when he guest-hosted "The Rachel Maddow Show." See the video below, after the jump.
- Rep. Gwen Moore, Democratic Congresswoman from Wisconsin, an outspoken critic of the GOP's VAWA bill.
- Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation. She is also the author of "The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama."
- Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv, as well as the co-author of "The Declaration of Independents."
- Dwight Hopkins, professor of theology and director of MA Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
- Elon James White, founder of This Week in Blackness, and host of "Blacking it Up."
- Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, NBC Latino contributor and fellow at the LBJ School at the University of Texas.
As always, folks -- be sure to interact with us during the show here in the comments of this post, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #nerdland. We look forward to having you join us at 10am ET! See Melissa's TRMS segment below the jump.