Michelle, it's always a bad idea to take sides in a debate, but I think you're right. He probably thinks Obama has been an Uncle Tom, and a black man can't win unless he's honest -- and he sees himself as the embodiment of the honest black man. So he displays what he believes Obama is hiding, knowing full well it will repel the larger public, and confirming that the public might vote for a black man, but not a "real" black man.

Can I say how sincerely I hope that this doesn't actually affect who will be our next president?

After a week-long media hiatus, it's terribly disheartening to return to find Wright back in the spotlight, this time hopping up and down, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs.

I also sincerely hope that this doesn't affect who will occupy the Oval Office.  That being said, Obama is faced with a pretty clear choice.  He can either cut this man loose, definitively and obviously, or he can watch as his campaign lurches toward an eventual loss in November.  As someone else posted in another thread, in order for Obama's movement to expand, he must move beyond his original, energized (and increasingly enervated) base.  Wright's antics will make that much more difficult, if not impossible, and cutting him loose will show a decisiveness that will be necessary should Obama get the nomination after this grueling process.

Or maybe Wright feels that he's been slighted and thinks he ought to defend his good name.  Nah, that makes too much sense.

Michelle,

I suspect that the Wrightmania is coming from several directions.  Wright himself, of course, but then also those commentators who seem to think we've never before seen this kind of meglomania from a preacher before.

My post this a.m. (typos corrected) on MP's corner of the page:

============================

His racial angle aside, Wright sounds very much like his limelight seeking pastoral kin, Robertson, Falwell, Dobbs, Hagee, and other whose names have long since dropped down the memory hole.

I suspect that a chrestomathy of the voluble reverends' greatest sound bites would, after awhile, look like one of those "match the quote with the speaker" quizzes.  Most of these tele-iluminati have made condemnatory remarks about America, often with the clear implication that they and they alone had a direct phone line to you know Who.

There is demonstrable evidence that God has lost interest in orchestrating Notre Dame football, but beyond that, we have no idea what's on His mind.

Dan

==================================================

Another thread the tele-illuminati have in comon is bizzare theories about the origin of AIDS, none of which have anything to do with science.

But the main thread is that they know and we don't; they talk to God, we don't.

No wonder He's abandoned us.  Just kidding.

Dan

Humm, seems that Rev Wright has not only been deemed a nat'l threat but he is supposed to take all this criticism and be quiet.

Why is Wright being expected to not respond?  I am rather surprised it has taken him so long to actually respond...

Man, this is a weird situation. Obama has to "throw him under the bus", Wright has to forfeit his right to defend himself against criticism, and we continue to waste time on this stupid controversy while gas hits $4, home foreclosures are soaring, Iraq casualities are back (seems that the surge ain't working as well as some say)....

truly bizarre....

Why do we have to be talking about a pastor? Why does religion come into the debate? To me, this is simply boring and depressing. Can't we discuss the policies Obama is defending, and what kind of president he would be?

I think this is exactly right.

I think Wright actually has an honest motive here.  He (and many of his fellow black pastors) feel that the response to Wright is actually an attack on the Black church.  I think he honestly feels a need to respond here, and defend his faith.  Of course, at this point, he's a pretty poor messenger for that purpose, and his own ego prevents him from acknowledging that fact.  And I don't deny that he's enjoying the opportunity to raise his own profile.  But that doesn't mean that he isn't driven in part by an honest effort to testify to his faith and represent his flock.

How ironic that we spent 2007 talking about Romney's religion challenge . . . and now it's actually Obama who needs to do some JFK-style explaining of his faith (as opposed to just distancing himself from Wright personally).

Possible, Andrew.  Maybe he feels he's been unfairly portrayed in the media as inflammatory, divisive, race-obsessed, narcissistic, and paranoid and now he's trying to dispel those notions.  If so, he's doing a heckuva job.

It would be wise to ask the question, cui bono?

Most obviously the Clintons.  

Are you sure the Clintons didn't get to Wright?  Are you certain his new McMansion and $10 million line of credit came from his church?

If there had been a murder, detectives would be checking this out.

gea1434 writes, "I think Wright actually has an honest motive here.  He (and many of his fellow black pastors) feel that the response to Wright is actually an attack on the Black church. "

Guess what, gea1434, if this kind of falsehood and hysteria is promulgated by the Black Church, then the Black Church deserves to be attacked.

Would a white church fomenting reciprochal insanity not be condemned?  Of course-- it would be called a hotbed of fundamentalist, holly roller bizarros.

Whites-- especially the media-- are just frightened to death ever to say the  obvious lest they be seen as "racists".  

Well, guess what, black people can be morons, too.  

gea1434 writes, "I think Wright actually has an honest motive here.  He (and many of his fellow black pastors) feel that the response to Wright is actually an attack on the Black church. "

Guess what, gea1434, if this kind of falsehood and hysteria is promulgated by the Black Church, then the Black Church deserves to be attacked.

Would a white church fomenting reciprochal insanity not be condemned?  Of course-- it would be called a hotbed of fundamentalist, holly roller bizarros.

Whites-- especially the media-- are just frightened to death ever to say the  obvious lest they be seen as "racists".  

Well, guess what, black people can be morons, too.  

irnunkle writes, "...Can't we discuss the policies Obama is defending, and what kind of president he would be?"

No, irunkle, more important than his putative policies is Obama's true character.  Until we are sure we comprehend who he really is, what he says are to be his policies don't much matter.

If his character is flawed, his ability or even his true will, to carry out declared policies would be very much in question.

Wright is out to make the future affirm his reality. All that he says and does is for this purpose alone. It isn't unique or surprising. It's just that the stakes are magnified in this contention. Michelle and Chris are both right.

Further, there isn't anything which can happen in the future which won't be an evidence of his sagacity and wisdom. At least to those who are inclined in his direction. Obama is in a real tough spot here.

The problem is this:

Rev. Wright will go nuclear on Obama is Obama REALLY distances himself. So Obama is forced to sort of skirt around the issue.

It's a bad problem. Rev. Wright seems to be a lunatic.

Agreed Channy. I'd love to see Obama go all Bill Cosby on Wright's ass. But like I said above - Wright will do a permanent media tour if Obama does that...

I think the best way for Obama to win here (and it seems unlikely) is for him to be positioned as the victim of Wright's craziness...that will in a sense separate Obama and Wright (former friends, presently adversaries). But I still worry that Wright will go nuclear...the man seriously seems to be psychotic.

Chan, you know very well that lots of falsehoods (creationism) and hysteria (omg gays!) are promulgated in respectable white churches every day.  It's just not racial falsehoods and hysteria.

Still, it's time for Wright to exit the national stage; he's hurting race relations more than helping them, not to mention chipping away at the appeal of the candidate he putatively supports.  The whole affair is depressing.  I half expect Obama to ask "who will rid me of this troublesome reverend?" at his next press conference.

Channy:

RE: Obama's character.

Most of us here (democrats, mostly) are discussing this issue as if it's a political issue to deal with. We're all coming from the perspective that Rev. Wright has NOTHING to do with Obama's character, but that Republicans will try to MAKE IT about his character. So we're grappling with how to make this case politically...

For most of us, Obama's character has nothing to do Rev. Wright. Why should it? African American preachers tend to be pretty left wing. This does not surprise many of us. Some of them are very nutty. The older ones are sometimes very fixated on racial issues that are a bit past their prime. Most of us understand that Barack Obama can go to that church and ignore the politics while focusing on the Jesus part and the community part.

This whole "character issue" is a BS canard. Wright has NOTHING to do with Obama's beliefs or his character. But I'll readily admit that the perception will be that Wright is tied to Obama, and Obama needs to deal with it.

Virginiacentrist writes, "...I think the best way for Obama to win here (and it seems unlikely) is for him to be positioned as the victim of Wright's craziness...that will in a sense separate Obama and Wright..."

Good theory, Virginia.  But, Obama's conundrum is, if Wright is crazy, how did Obama go 20 years without seeming to notice?  It raises big questions about either Obama's judgement or his true beliefs.

So, which is it?  Obama is incredibly naive and incapable of making a moral decision to leave a crazy guys' church?  

Or, Obama is not really so averse to Wright's beliefs?

Well, Michelle, it is probably not often that you and Rush Limbaugh agree:

www.rushlimbaugh.com/.../01125108.guest.html

   I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club.  It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is.  I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

   So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what's best for him, which is clearly all he's interested in, what's best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it's easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn't want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America."

   It would certainly fuel Reverend Wright's future and continue to help him raise money and keep people whipped up into a frenzy.  He's not helpful.  Whatever he thinks he's doing, it is not helpful to Barack Obama.

Note, if the Right is picking up this meme, then it can be used skillfully by Barack to distance himself from the statements.

I don't know, ratnerstar, I'm an  Episcopal.  I think McCain is, too.  Episcopal's are notoriously reasonable about gays and all the rest of the social issues.

VA, let me disagree.  Most people aren't aware of who Obama is, or what he has done.  He is very new to the national stage, especially in comparison to HRC and McCain.  We've see them both since the early 90s at least.

Obama is selling himself as a man of good judgment.  "I was against the war in Iraq before it started."  We hear it in every speech - to highlight his alleged good judgment.

Now we have a man who condemns America, believes AIDS was invented by whitey to kill blacks, etc.  A man with whom Obama is close, who married him, who baptized his children, who he "can no more disown that he could disown his own grandmother."  For 20 years.  Fair enough.

But this reflects on Obama's judgment, on who he listens to, who he has around him, and has had.  As if Wright isn't bad enough, he's got Ayers to contend with.  If Ayers said today, well, it was long ago, I was young and foolish, etc., OK many could give him (and Obama) a pass.  But the man is completely unrepentent about his views that he is sorry only that he didn't kill more Americans.  Sounds like OBL to me.  Why, oh why, would Obama consort with him, still today?  Again, this reflects on his supposed good judgment.

Obama has a real problem, and it will quite interesting to see how he deals with it going forward.  Because it simply won't go away.

Yeah, Episcopals are pretty good.  Lutherans too and hell, Methodists, lots of Baptists, that church down the street from me next to the taco stand, etc.  I'm not saying that all white churches are crazy, just that many are, and they're still considered respectable.  

I've been wondering all day -what if Wright has something  on Obama that would ruin him if exposed? Something from Obama's past before he was a public figure? Something that only his pastor knows? I know it's melodramatic, but that would explain why Obama cannot come down hard on Wright.

"So, which is it?  Obama is incredibly naive and incapable of making a moral decision to leave a crazy guys' church?  

Or, Obama is not really so averse to Wright's beliefs?"

Chan, on the second question, I think anyone with two operative brain cells could see that Obama is completey averse to Wright's beliefs -- at least the beliefs that came up in the first sermon that Obama dealt with in his Philly speech.  His entire campaign is about getting beyond those beliefs as an axiom of American life.

For the first question -- if you rephrase the "when did you stop beating your wife?" style formulation -- I think it's that Obama suddenly arrived after Harvard into a different milieu that was both useful to him in a social/political and perhaps an emotional way, and he saw how that milieu provided a respite and refuge for the Chicago Af-Am community (or the more upwardly-mobile part of it) and a brand of evangelical Christianity that is deeply rooted in black American experience.  I don't doubt that he rolled his eyes inwardly at some of the things he heard, but he was trying to be non-elitist, not to look down on people who didn't have his imagination or ambition, and to fit in with a congregation that clearly admired its pastor and probably knew how to distinguish between his rhetorical flights and his pastoral work.

In Chicago, Obama had to be part of a black church if he wanted the access and credibility for his work, but it looks like all the others were more conservative and anti-intellecual than Wright's.  To that extent, its perfectly understandable.  It had nothing to do with naivety or moral inadequacy.  But Wright today is a very different matter.  He's not a pastor or man of the cloth if he's appearing on a yak-show tour trying to take down the most interesting and promising contender for the presidency since JFK.

I have been watching, and am now listening, to Barack's press conference in response to Wright.  He is doing an excellent and credible job of separating himself from Wright.

We will see if his remarks today become definitive.  But, they have a better chance of doing so than did the Philadelphia speech, which speech I admired.

Is there any difference between Rev. Wright's "It's not an attack on me; it's an attack on the Black Church" and then-Judge Thomas's complaint in 1991 about a "high-tech lynching"?

tarfon. Apples and oranges. Wright would be claiming to be the Black Church. Thomas was claiming to be a black man.

Ain't no color distinctions in the transcendent Church.

Fair warning, Chan.  I'm an Episcopalian, too, and I'll be voting at the next General Convention.

In his National Press Club speech, Wright made several references, not much remarked upon so far, to the dozens (whence comes "Yo' mama"), the game of verbal oneupsmanship-by-insult practiced by generations of black men. You get a contemporary taste of it in the trash talk of black athletes and rival rappers. Blue-collar whites also play the dozens, having picked it up from drill sergeants in basic training or foremen and coworkers on construction sites.

Among its various uses, the dozens is a means for old-timers to put youngsters or newcomers in their place. Anyone who's ever witnessed a generational rivalry in politics or on job sites - a mature incumbent trying to fend off a young rival - should recognize the technique.

That's Wright's game here, the targets being Obama and the news media, not necessarily in that order.

Those who understand the dozens understand that Obama's low-key crazy-uncle rejoinders are the appropriate response. (Brushing his shoulder was a physical manifestation, via contemporary hip-hop.) Too many journalists don't know the game and can't recognize it being played.

It's fine by me, drdannyu.  There are two Episcopal Churches now.  The traditional Anglican one.  And the American spinoff.  Eventually the separation will be accompli.  Straight bishops in the third world.  Gay ones in the first.

First, Reverend Wright went renegade. Dayo Olopade had predicted his meltdown far in advance, and Michelle