Perhaps this is a good thing, in the end...

Unlike with Bush Jr, Obama, the "son" has obviously surpassed and outgrown Wright, the "father." Obama won't have to spend his entire presidency trying NOT to do everything "Poppy" did -- they way GW did to such disastrous results.

Obama has nothing to prove. It is obvious he is his own man.

I mean, my God, JFK's Dad was a womanizing, corrupt, former bootlegger Isolationist!

What is most discouraging is the continued "tribalism" of White America.

Close your eyes and imagine that Rev. Wright had been a rotund, pink-cheeked Schismatic Episcopalian priest who thought girls shouldn't be "Alter Boys." Or a scholarly Italian-American priest who hated Vactican II reforms. Or a Protestant bible-thumper who thought gays will rot in hell...or we could have been dealing with Mitt Rommney and the Church of LDS.

I have confidence in my candidate -- but I am not sure I have confidence in the people of the US (their track record lately has been bad!) and I have little or no confidence in the MSM -- and -- Salon, you have been a bit iffy these days too...

Thank goodness.

You can go back to your earlier Century now.

You aren't wanted here...

Since 2000, the American people have sat back and done NOTHING as our Government has tortured, wiretapped and fought an unnecessary war -- IN OUR NAME! -- and you get your panties in a wad over Obama attending a liberal church for 20 years?

Catholics have continued to attend Mass all through the sex scandal involving priests and their superiors who covered up for them -- for DECADES!

Are you kidding me?

I am sick to death of people telling Rev Wright -- Obama and all the rest of us how we are supposed "feel" and "act."

Just take responsibility for what has happened on your OWN watch. For the last 8 years, Americans have been derelict in their duty. ALL Americans.

Re Michelle - I guess you didn't read about Michelle's Princeton roommate from the South whose Mother marched over to a school official and demanded a new -- white -- roommate for her "flower of the South -- as soon the the Mom found out about Michelle's race.

And I guess you never have never dealt with the kind of "backhanded, quiet" racism that is rampant -- even in "liberal" institutions and settings?

Can you even begin to guess what it must have been like for 18 year old scholarship/loan student Michelle to arrive at a nearly all-white bastion of privilege like Princeton -- one of 6 children of a working class family from the South Side of Chicago?

Perhaps young Michelle wasn't discerning enough to be able to see that race AND class contributed to her discomfort but I hardly think you could blame her thinking it was more about her race! As an Hispanic who looks "white," I was constantly told I couldn't be "Mexican-American" but I sure as heck knew the rich kids saw me as lower-class at the Public Ivy I attended -- especially after they found out I went to Community College and transferred in. Gasp! And these were rich kids who hadn't even gotten in to Princeton.

The affinity between those who have been treated badly because of race and class is something Obama recognizes and something he plans to work on in office. THIS should be an issue working class voters care about; not some stupid argument about whether Obama is "patriotic enough," or whether his wife is too elitist and snobby.

I am SICK to death of people who make judgments about "what other people have been through." Read Michelle's paper and learn what she went through, dimwit! It might be tinged with some of the angst and melodrama of youth but it is what she felt at the time. Maybe you will learn something instead of just looking for ideas that echo the few ideas you already have in floating around in your brain.

PS: to give Michelle's roommate credit, she stayed and although they were good friends, things seemed to go OK.

As someone who lived in the Developing World most of my adult life, who spent time in the Jim Crow South (I was quite young, but the hate you feel from white neighbors toward "Nigger Lovers" like my Liberal parents is something you never forget), I don't think you get it.

And neither of us knows what it was like to have to spend years developing a neutral demeanor so that we would not attract the kind of attention that would get us strung up or punished for being disrespectful...

There is no justice in the world for most people -- but for minorities (in any country or place), for poor women and children and for those without power, it can be horrible.

Conservatives ALREADY call Liberals "America-haters for simply being truthful about our history. Hyper-Nationalist freaks like David Horowitz constantly berate Liberal college professor for

"poisoning the minds of US students" -- for the many of the same ideas you and others are accusing Rev. Wright of.

Well, I am not going to be cowed and I am glad Wright is not either. Let him keep talking. Within a certain amount of time, maybe he will be as much a part of the scenery as those crazy gasbags on the Right -- with their Apocalyptic rantings about gays and feminists.

Liberals and Alternate Thinkers on the Left need to stop "hiding out." We have just as much right to be cranky, crazy and wrong as those of the Right.

And when we believe something -- we shouldn't be afraid to stand up for our beliefs!