I don’t have a perfect answer. I frankly don’t know how, in the long run, you reverse the mindset without addressing the merits of Wright’s critique, when stripped of its more inflammatory rhetoric.

But the reality of American politics, and the fundamental corruption of the American media, suggest that it’s almost impossible to address these questions in the middle of a campaign when Fox News, and now the networks and MSNBC, are eager to make the Obama/Wright relationship the major issue of the campaign. We’ve got the media scouring the attendance sheets at Obama’s church, for heaven’s sake, while the war rages on, the economy is risking collapse, millions of American are losing their jobs, their homes, their insurance, their retirements and their hopes for education.

I haven’t read all of Obama’s speech today, but it seems the political reality is that he has no choice in today’s America than to come down hard on Wright. I don’t fault either Wright or Obama for recognizing why this is happening. But we need to recognize what this means.

What appears to be happening is that the media are essentially ruling out of acceptable bounds any campaign position that questions the morality of American foreign policy. This is not about Wright. It’s about whether it’s legitimate to question the underlying attitudes of John McCain, Lieberman, Cheney, et al. If the media can force Obama to denounce his black pastor for his critique of American, then a comparable — though less incendiary — critique of McCain/Lieberman/Cheney is also out of bounds. You can’t question America, so you can’t question America’s self-proclaimed defenders. This is a dangerous argument.

The media is in the process of narrowing the field of legitimate debate, and attacking Obama’s blackness in the process (all Black Churches are anti-American, right?) and we need someone to fight to keep the debate open, to expose the implicit racism and the media’s willingness to foreclose the issue. I see a way for Obama to do that, and I’ll be looking for that in his speech, but I understand how today’s politics limit his ability to do so.

In the meantime, Clinton too has a stake in keeping this debate open, because otherwise her ability to take on the war’s continuing occupation, the funding of the war, and McCain’s views that the war on Islam extremism is the defining issue of our time will be much narrower. In short, the Wright/Obama issue is a proxy for the core issue of this election, and I want to preserve Obama’s/Clinton’s flexibility in addressing that issue.

By some standards here, I’m a pretty moderate guy, but I’ve heard versions of the Wright critique for decades, since my innocent days at Berkeley in the ’60s, where one got a dose of such rhetoric just walking to class. You don’t have to embrace the incendiary elements to absord the underlying argument that America has a racist, militarist history and has much to answer for.

“*** we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.”

Obama has told us that if he had ever heard such language he would have denounced it and quite the church. Do you find this to be a likely scenario? We are not just talking about Obama’s church pastor, we are talking about the man who married the Obamas, baptised their children, and who Obama selected to be his personal spiritual counselor as well as to be a member of his committee of spiritual advisors for his campaign.

On a pragmatic note, you may not think this is fair, but try to picture the fall campaign if Obama is the nominee. Those clips will be everywhere, juxtaposed with clips of Obama extolling this man. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize at hand: we must win this presidency. One more vote on the Supreme Court and you can kiss our rights goodbye. I just do not think Obama will be able to withstand the Republican onslaught, using this ammunition. Hillary can; she has taken everything they had in the last 20 years and withstood it all. She withstood the full might of a federal special prosecutor who had a clear agenda to incriminate her, and he did not lay a glove on her.

Who is more likely to win for us in November? That is the critical question and I believe the answer is Hillary

I used to sit in church (Methodist) every Sunday, and I listened to the sermons. Virtually all white congregation, but nevertheless, our minister(s) occassionally thought it important to remind us that violence against others, racism, facism, and other extemisms were not compatible with the Christian faith, that it was a moral imperative to see these evils in our own lives and address them. That this might be a phenonmenon in Obama’s church should not surprise or upset anyone, except those who are not comfortable being reminded of these truths.

Do you not see that we are witnessing a despicable effort by our media to argue that liberation theology — part of which is railing/ fighting against injustice — is not an acceptable religious creed? Who are these self appointed high priests — the Broders, Halperins, Russerts and Matthews and Wallaces — who dare to impose their religious views on us?

Do you not see that as we watch millions of Americans lose their homes, their jobs, their health insurance, their chance at higher education — even as the government bails out the most irresponsible crooks on Wall Street — that as we watch 4000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed — that instead of focusing on these real atrocities and asking how we got there and who led us there, our media thinks the most important question of the day is whether Obama was sitting in a pew when his pastor said these things are evil? How perverse, how irresponsible. I sure hope he was.

We need to drag the war mongers and those who veto childrens’ health care into church and force them to listen.

Barack Obama does not have to defend his pastor; his obligation in church was to listen and absord those parts of the sermon he thinks are relevant to his life. He apparently chose the redemption/foregiveness part of his pastor’s message. But our media ignores that; it’s guilt by association with someone who did not commit a crime, but never mind that; they see blood and all the sharks are swirling, looking for attendence sheets on Sunday morning, but they won’t ask the President who signed off on torture or illegal wiretapping.