You have to admit that if Barack does lose we can sadly point to the Wright issue and say things like, "Well, back in the primary we knew that Barack wasn't perfect and we even had examples of his weaknesses right before out eyes. I guess too many people thought that the election was just about getting a great speaker in office and didn't care about the years of experience and vetting that Clinton was offering us."

I don't think that's how Joan would respond. I think she would simply point out that she had never really believed that Barack was anything more than human and that she wrote about his weakness repeatedly once he was heading in the direction of the general election.

I think Joan thinks we should focus on these Wright type issues until republicans do and then the trick is to point out the relative weakness of such a fucus in the light of the larger issues related to electing a president. That might be the point in time in which Joan will intelligently reveal the role that racism plays in politics. I don't think Joan will let her previous blogging stop her from such a reversal of tact because I think she can justify her current approach just by mentioning that this is still an ongoing primary.

More like a therapy session. I really wonder, if John McCain were to go on Bill Moyers' program, whether there'd be a long series of questions along the lines of, "Why do you think people are misunderstanding you so? And why does the corporate media want to hurt you so?"

What a twisted old fool Moyers is. I routinely disagree with Joan Walsh, but she would surely have performed an interview with Rev. Wright that was 1000% better than Moyers. The Wright inerview revealed what a fraud Moyers is as a journalist and what a cheerleader for the left he is.

I saw the interview, but I seem to have missed the part where Moyers asked Wright about his assertion that AIDS was a creation of the U.S. government. Can anybody point out where that question was asked?

Walsh lacks the knowledge and empathy to understand what a man of Wright’s age went through growing up in this country during the 1940s-1970s. Walsh implies that after the civil rights movement that everyone has a blank slate. During the interview, Wright said he questioned his faith after going down south and seeing blacks abused under the guise of Christianity. To regain his faith and his cause for being he rethought his religiosity.

Walsh gives short shrift on how downtrodden and ashamed blacks were of themselves. Many of us believed and accepted the labels that our oppressors put on us. For blacks to accept religion in coordination with the civil rights movement, black religion needed a different brand. Wright and many black pastors took a three-tiered task to motivate blacks out of our lassitude and despair. Pastors in religious terms described the problem, assessed the blame and sought solutions. Passive staid preaching was not working.

Walsh conflates Wright’s political punditry with his theology. She assumes that church members and Obama cannot place Wright’s comments in historical and religious perspectives as the church listens. Black Preachers are by tradition promontory. They warn the flock of their wicked ways and talk of God’s retribution for bad deeds. Walsh also thinks that people cannot figure out where Wright was coming from.

Remember that American equality was not actively promoted until we fought in a major race war against the racist Nazis and had fend off criticism of our segregated and discriminatory past to fight the Communists in during the Cold War. The old Confederacy fought civil rights and still worships their war flag to celebrate slavery and peonage as righteous causes. We have come a long way but still have a ways to go. Remember the surge of nooses across the country after the recent incidents in Louisiana.

Walsh slathers Obama with the fiery part of Wright’s rhetoric as if its Obama’s own rhetoric. I have been unable discern any of Wright’s rhetoric in Obama’s platform or speeches. Maybe Obama secretly holds these views and we are too dumb to understand it.

A grim view of America, yes. And is it undeserved? NO! The man speaks truth. Shall we begin to face it? To square our country's "creed" with its deeds? Rev. Wright IS right! And Joan Walsh is a fool. And we are fools if we turn from the truth, because then our country will never find the path to righteousness or fairness or honor. It has been a long road and we can't whitewash the past and we can't pretend that slavery or the genocide of native americans or the continuing disenfranchisement of African Americans till the 1960s didn't happen, or that our country doesn't still have a grave problem with racism.

We have a chance now, just a bare chance to heal our country and Joan Walsh by denying its problems is not helping with screeds such as this one.

You have to admit that if Barack does lose we can sadly point to the Wright issue and say things like, "Well, back in the primary we knew that Barack wasn't perfect and we even had examples of his weaknesses right before out eyes. I guess too many people thought that the election was just about getting a great speaker in office and didn't care about the years of experience and vetting that Clinton was offering us."

Sorry, I just have to say you slay me, Carol.

I'm talking deep belly laughs.

The problem I have with the Rev. Wright issue, and apparently I'm the only one in the universe with this particular problem, is that the USA is founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Did we not split from England lo, those many years ago, in large part to have the freedom to worship as we chose? Rev. Wright is not running for political office. I don't care where Obama, Clinton, or McCain go to church. I don't care where their family members, frat brothers, co-workers or garbage collectors go to church. We had, for awhile there, a candidate is actually WAS a pastor at a church and nobody ran around wringing their hands. We also had a Mormon dude, as I recall. The few people who had the temerity to question whether this would color these candidates' decisions had their hands slapped quickly because it was wrong to mix politics and religion. And yet, here we are, actually DEBATING about Obama's pastor and choice of church. Did we change the Constitution AGAIN this month? (I know it's hard to keep track of; anybody seen the first or fourth amendments anywhere? I seem to have lost mine...)