Joan, you have lost all credibility in this race. As much as you would like to believe your reporting has been even handed, it has been as one sided as say....fox news. Apparently your peers are noticing too, zero nominations for the 2008 webby awards. Salon needs a new editor in chief yesterday.

It's not that Rev.Wright may have influenced Obama (I doubt that he did), it's that Obama was quite willing to be closely associated with him (despite being aware of his positions) ostensibly to aid and support his political aspirations and evolving career. By establishing affiliation with an activist black church and it's outspoken Pastor in a primarily black district where Obama would be running for office is political pragmatism, nothing more and nothing less. I guess that kind of makes your guy just another politician, making the end justify the means. You have to admit, however, that there's a tinge of religious hypocrisy in this whole picture for it makes one wonder how a man raised by an Atheist mother and in attendance at Muslim schools, adopts this type of Christianity so late in his life.

I can't believe I'm reading this dreck on the pages of Salon (as opposed to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal -- to which I originally began to respond on this subject), but as I become more familiar with the gaseous offerings of Joan Walsh, I most certainly should.

Once again, although it shouldn't be necessary with a publication such as Salon, we have to lament the loss of nuance and context, and in conjunction with the rise of so-called "equal-weight" politics. Media saps like Ms. Walsh extract Reverend Wright's comments from their original context (which I find completely appropriate in relation to the life experiences of Mr. Wright and his congregation), inaccurately amplify a larger significance that only exists in the echo chamber, and then inappropriately attach them to Senator Barack Obama.

If Reverend Wright had delivered any of these speeches in New Orleans, I doubt he would have been so excoriated. This is, ironically, while Senator John McCain continues to receive a pass for his association by endorsement with the much more scarily radical Pastor John C. Hagee, who has publicly claimed that Hurricane Katrina was a result of God's wrath for the city's celebration of homosexuality. (And this is just one among many of his disturbing viewpoints.) Senator "Straight Talk" McCain was allowed his strange kabuki dance over the administration's handling of Katrina without any scrutiny at all that he represents the party that so criminally mishandled this crisis, and the incendiary, racist rhetoric of an influential endorser.

This inconsistent application of "association accountability is grossly unfair, and reprehensibly irresponsible. And at the risk of repeating myself, shame on Ms. Walsh.

Joan: "America would seem to be all about dispossessing the Indians, enslaving blacks, interning the Japanese and now killing Iraqis. He said nothing about Americans who fought any of that"

Anybody who read the Declaration of Independence the day it was signed would be shocked to see America go on to commit all the crimes in that quote. Who America is and what America has done cannot be separated. A handful of abolitionists, peace demonstrators, and decades-late apologies cannot expiate the offenses committed by the many.

Obama explained his respect for and appreciation of Wright in his first book. But we can't really expect people (or bloggers) to read books now, can we?

If Obama is guilty of America-hating by association with Wright (whom I would argue is not an America-hater), then, Joan, you are guilty by association with low-information, sound bite voters (you may not be low-information but your ballot looks just like theirs). And Joan, when Electrorobot and Cythera45 give you an attagirl (as they just did) then that's your sign to reverse engines. Unless you want to be guilty of helping to elect 100 Years McCain.

It's Obama'sGate......Barack Applewhite. Is there a comet coming soon or something.

One of the cheapest rhetorical devices going is to make one small correction. That implies, of course, that no further corrections are needed.

That is the unpleasant taste your fastidious little update to your column leaves.

Where are the rest of the updates, Joan? Five hundred posts have called you out for this tortured exercise in Clinton Apologetics. Where is the thoughtful reply which addresses them?

I was so - amazed - at your column that I registered with Salon for the sole purpose of posting a reply. (I am a long term reader of Salon. I just never read anything appalling enough to force me to add my voice to the crowd before this incredible - and I mean that in a bad way - exercise in vote gathering for Hillary.)

When are you planning to address all the other things you got wrong?

Has noone ever heard of a pastor with an ego? Has noone ever heard of a pastor who is stubborn? Has noone ever heard of a pastor who can be wrong?

I'm sorry Wright isn't a politican and isn't delicate about his effect on Obama's campaign. I realize it's unhelpful. But I did enjoy the heck out of him. I like smart rousing speakers even when I don't agree with everything they say. Gee, I wonder if that's part of why Obama didn't quit his church in a rightous huff? Maybe, like me, he is in church for the beloved community, not to worship its clay-footed pastor.

I grew up around black churches. People with pokers up their rhetorical butts need to get over themselves.

Beyond that, Wright is irrelevant. What disappoints me so profoundly is Joan's repeatedly feeding the flames, making a sensationalist bonfire of it all. Draggggggggging it out.

In my view, a responsible journalist would be pouring a wide stream of cold water, repeatedly, on the whole conflagration, and be reminding readers repeatedly that what one fiery pastor preaches does not stain his parishoner to the point that this parishoner shouldn't be our president. That would be leadership.

Obama should be our president. I hope voters will make it so.

I wish Joan could uphold the big picture. The picture needs to be so so so much bigger.

The rest of the world is waiting for our votes. Petty sound bytes and personality and association politics are so irrelevant next to the AMERICA IS CHANGING PROFOUNDLY signal that we present to the rest of the planet in November.