"It's too short because the "national conversation on race" we all keep promising to have has barely begun, and it would take longer than November to hash out how much Wright's role in Obama's life should mean to voters." -- Joan Walsh

How can this be? It ought to be self-evident that it ought to mean little, or nothing, to voters. Each and every one of us is a friend or family member of someone with some view or opinion that rubs somebody the wrong way. Most Americans seem to think there's something wrong with America. In fact the candidates universally do. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be running for President, or at least they'd be running on a strictly "do-nothing" platform.

With all the ridiculousness and circumstance that surrounds the entirety of American political and entertainment life; Everything surrounding these controversies over Wright, Hagee, and whomever else is nothing more than self-manufactured indignation for its own sake. People make a lifetime practice out of proselytizing via shock-value. Shocking!

If Americans can't resolve that by "November" we need to take a hard look at the benchmark that defines mental-retardation, then replace the existing metric with simply, "American Citizen."

But the notion that Obama may or should be held responsible for what Wright says is laughable in the extreme. What he should be held responsible for -- and I say this as an Obama supporter -- is how he deals with all of this. I wish he hadn't stayed in that church -- not because I don't care for the tenor of some of Wright's sermons, but because I DON'T hold Obama responsible for them and I think he should have been politically canny enough to know this was all going to happen. Did he think these issues wouldn't come up? Makes me wonder if he's as smart as I've thought he was.

At this point I think the only smart play is to cut the anchor. I wholeheartedly agree that Trinity and Wright have done some marvelous things, and that Trinity will no doubt continue to. But in reading Goodwin's Team of Rivals lately, I'm struck by the clear-eyed awareness of Lincoln, Seward and others in that cohort of the potential harm that being associated with them could at times do another politician, and their regular refusals to allow that to happen. They would decline to appear with someone, or take their name off something, so that whatever temporary public-relations virus they might be carrying would not spread to another.

This, I think, is what Wright and Obama both need to do. Wright needs to recognize that this may be the best chance he'll get in his lifetime to see a black man elected president who is fully conscious of the issues Wright has worked for, and he needs to disappear for the next nine months. Obama needs to recognize that his association with Wright, innocent in intent though it may be (and I believe it is), could doom his candidacy all by itself if it's not amputated and cauterized immediately -- not because the relationship is wrong, but because it will be used as a cudgel by those who want to see Obama fail.

You cannot hand your enemies the weapon with which to smite you. And if you find you have, you must, MUST, disarm them of it. By whatever means necessary.

Joan will feel much better if a Woman bombs the hell out of Iran rather than a Black Man.

You've come a long way, BABY!

white woman Hillary supporter race baiting in the guise of commentary without fairly dealing with the culture.

God bless america for NYC police supervising wedding parties?

You know, Joan,

Hagee et. al-- all those racist, fascist bastards-- not a peep from the prominent R commentators, other than to say, on rare occasion, "stout-hearted men"-- because they fundamentally GET in a way that the Left, and YOU-- do not, that to repeat your enemy's message only amplifies it, and much more than if Rush et. al. amplify it.

Do you think you're capable of stealing a page from the winners' playbooks and help elect someone who will keep us out of WWIII? Elections are not confessionals. They are elections.

If the other part of the D party that is behind Hillary had bothered to pick a candidate that wasn't so universally, reprehensibly hated by a good portion of middle America, it might not matter who was up on the D side. But, unfortunately, because people respond to name recognition (the devil that you know) which is a product of repetition, we have one serious candidate, and that is Obama.

It is not our job to criticize, in a serious way, a marginally related party to the Obama candidacy. Our enemies will do that well enough. Soul-searching is best done in a bar in SF with your buddies. Out here in the Red-State trenches, we could do without your solipsistic luxuries.

If you haven't figured it out already, Joan is a fierce Clinton partisan. She finds it almost impossible to deliver a compliment to Obama that isn't backhanded, consistently ignores facts which undercut her criticisms of him, and constantly finds ways to bring up reasons to attack Obama, whether they have any merit, or, more often (like with this article) not.

The sad thing is that, since she's editor-in-chief, there's nobody at Salon with the standing to tell her that she's undercutting Salon's reputation and objectivity with every article.

With millions of Americans looking to transcend petty partisanship, and eager reliable news sources outside the reach of traditional big media, it seems that Walsh is missing a gigantic opportunity to position Salon as one of the most important news sites of the next decade. But instead of attracting subscribers, she's driving them away. I certainly no longer expect to renew when my premium membership is up.

For a while, I was surprised at the fierce anti-Obama undercurrent to all of Salon's reporting. Now I'll be surprised if a week goes by where Joan or somebody on her staff finds an excuse to attack Obama.