...that there are no "editor's choices" on this thread--meaning you have to read the entire thread, rather than find suggested-nuggets of wit, insight or clarity. Thinking that particularly telling with something in excess of fifty webpages of comments.

What? Is no editor reading the responses at this point?

I think that may speak more volumes about this editor than anything mere readers think.

You write: "I can't believe the vitriol in these letters directed against Joan Walsh. She's a liberal and if she has a hard time swallowing what Rev. Wright is saying, how do you think it's going to play to mainstream America in November?"

What many of us here are arguing is that Joan's claim to "liberalism" is tenuous, at best, as evidenced by her obstinate refusal to handle this issue with anything like the complexity it merits, if she insists on handling it at all.

Joan's perspective is not liberal in the least, as evidenced by the implicit premises in this latest polemic.

This isn't about Joan, it's about something much, much deeper, namely, what is liberalism, what are its core tenets, and are liberals willing to champion them or not?

From Cone:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

This is where Wright gets his inspiration and in turn where Barack and Michelle get theirs...

It would appear that the Editor has become Salon's own version of Joe Lieberman.

The line "I deplore all of those civilian killings as well, but 9/11 was indefensible" took my breath away and I had to stop reading for several minutes. A closer reading of the entire article did not redeem it. The subtext appears to me to be that the US's killing of civilians is merely collateral damage in the pursuit of some greater well-intentioned good. One hardly knows where to begin (Iraq perhaps?). Joan, to put it politely, you need to get out of your country more. For an extended stay, perhaps. Rev. Wright sees your country more clearly than you do, because of his vantage point. I don't share all of his views, but when he curses America, I believe he is cursing the repeated betrayal of its promise, as many of us around the world do and have done, during the Chilean coup, the contra war in Nicaragua, the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm, the current war in Iraq and on and on and on... If he has a grim view of America, maybe it is because the picture is grim? Most of the Canadians I know take it for granted that when your country runs out of water or oil, it will not hesitate to take it from ours by force, if need be. So long as our government cooperates in allowing your country to take it by stealth (NAFTA, etc.), it won't have to, but it doesn't make us any less jaundiced about the moral integrity of the US.

Please note, Jeremiah Wright has himself stated that James cone is an influence...

"For white people, God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God’s presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God’s revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white. Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity. God cannot be white even though white churches have portrayed him as white. When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers. To speak of Satan and his powers becomes not just a way of speaking but a fact of reality. When we can see a people who are controlled by an ideology of whiteness, then we know what reconciliation must mean. The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ"

It is a grey-to-black area when we talk about 9/11. The terrorist attacks were indefensible.

However, I don't think Jeremiah Wright was defending them.

He was making coorelations with others in history who fancied themselves "freedom fighters."

I stand with those who don't like what they thought they were fighting for.

We also need to have a clearer understanding of that they were fighting for. If we did, we never would have been involved in Iraq in the first place.

I do agree with Joan Walsh in that this is just too adult to discuss and someone who thought AIDS was a government plot is probably not the person to point those things out.

I don't know if there's a Clinton campaign conflict or not.

I think Walsh has struck upon a very good business plan. She keeps Greenwald employed to inflame readers against journalists who abdicate their responsibility. Then she herself practices most egregiously many of the offenses to which Greenwald ascribes blame for the degradation of the political process as caused by the media. Freshly outraged, Salon readers seek to test Greenwald's theses on the media they consume. Salon readers don't have far to look since she herself, helpfully, offers herself as a prime example of corrupt, myopic, disingenuous punditry.

In outraging her readers she ensures thousands of clicks and turns her critics into free content providers for the web site. Look at how she posts her most knowingly outrageous posts on Friday night and then clocks off for the weekend. She's making money all weekend long by doing nothing except baiting a lot of very talented writers to do the work of which she is not capable.

Like many of you, I read her columns only for the letter writers, which restore some sort of hope, a sliver of sanity.

But I wonder though, how long she would keep it up if we all just stopped taking the bait. She doesn't listen to what we say so it's not really a conversation. She's an anti-intellectual who is not, by any standard I have ever known -- not even by late-twentieth century American standards -- on the left, and she doesn't respect the viewpoints of those of us who are. I like reading you all, but I don't like that Joan is using you to make money.

In any case, what was so shocking about Wright's sermon? It was, as several others have pointed out, Howard Zinn. The United States has done a lot of nasty things in pursuit of power and wealth. A country that doesn't acknowledge this and strive to make ammends is, in the long arc of history, going to be in line for some serious stick. A country that remains involved in an illegal war in Iraq hasn't, obviously, quite come to terms with this yet. And so, more trouble, is likely on the way. I don't know how this is a radical thesis. You can't claim to be of the left and reject this. It sort of defines what being on the left means.