I know this is going to spin on for a while, but let me jump in here as an Obama supporter and make a small plea for a minimum of evidence.

While I think the Clinton campaign is perfectly capable of doing something like this Wright issue today, we ought to remember that the Right is, as well.

It's just that the Right and the Clintons have the same short-term interest in damaging Obama, and all you need to ID a suspect is to connect motive and opportunity.

It could be either one.

I do think it's maybe time for Obama to give "The Speech" on race in America. Something that acknowledges the prejudices and burdens of our older citizens, who grew up under much different and harsher conditions than we might imagine. As NCSteve say in another thread, do we denounce and reject our grandparents because of the racial attitudes they developed in the earlier part of the last century? Nope.

Obama has to clarify what he thinks about Wright's message, but this is also an opportunity to talk in broader terms about race, about prejudice and about what his vision is of the America he loves enough to go through all this.

Actually, MJ, your post makes the case for why Obama's religious affiliations are relevant. If you, yourself, were running for public office, and claimed to be an Israel dove supporting Palestinian statehood etc., I would personally want to know why you attended a synagogue that was a favorite of Israel hawks, when there are presumably several other options available.

Now you just explained your thinking fairly well. And Obama should be perfectly capable of explaining his thinking. He can explain why, even though there are many views his minister holds that he rejects, there are still other things about his minister that he admires. Understanding what those are is a perfectly legit question. Presumably, Obama has many choices of church to attend. Why did he choose this one?

As in all of the other culturally touchy issues that have surrounded Obama, my preference is that he go for maximum openness and frankness, and give people credit for being able to handle the truth. Since I believe Obama is a very admirable figure, I believe the more people understand about him and what makes him tick morally, religiously and politically, the more they will admire him. He doesn't need us to run interference for him.

You are right that there is a double standard in the way the press takes an interest in the religious views of candidates. The way I see it is not that Obama's religious views and affiliations are not relevant, but rather that the religious views and affiliations of other candidates are equally relevant. They should all be examined.

McCain's religious affiliations have gotten a lot of press coverage lately. So fair is fair.

Thanks for this column, M.J. It can't have been all that easy to write, but it's what needs to be said about the buzz regarding Obama's Rev. Wright.

There is a joke about a Jew stranded on a tiny desert island for 15 years until a ship finally finds his note in a bottle and rescues him. Before leaving, he proudly shows the captain the house he'd built, his garden, and, at one end of the island, a synagogue built of stones and pine boughs. At the other end of the island, only a few hundred yards away, he shows off a second synagogue, built of logs.

"Very impressive," says the captain, "but you've been alone here, right? So why do you have two synagogues?"

"Oh," says the man, pointing violently toward one of them, "because I wouldn't set foot in THAT synagogue."

Thanks for reminding us that the reality of living one's life with other people across decades, in a community that's really cast up across time and space, is different from living on one's own private island, psychologically if not physically.

I must say, though, that I'm not sure I'd find it in myself to stay in a congregation whose rabbi, "celebrity" members, and oerhaps a critical mass or even bare majority of its other members were hell-bent (literally) on ventures like ones Charles Krauthammer, Douglas Feith -- and, just as adamantly if more sinuously, David Brooks -- have championed so relentlessly, within the congregation (Krauthammer) as well as beyond it.

A longer discussion for another time, but, since you've mentioned Krauthammer and Feith as members, I guess I can ask if this is Brooks' congregation, as well. I ask because on the occasion of one of his sons' bar mitzvahs a couple of years ago, Brooks wrote a column about, among other things, the Washington congregation where it was held. The column was a deft, unspoken rejoinder to Mel Gibson's fantasies, which were being widely touted at the time. I'd be sorry to think that the same congregation was too much awash in fantasies almost as dangerous.

I'm not particularly for attacking Obama's minister but you have to be consistent about it. If it's hands off the delusional god boy then it should have been hands off Ferraro and all surrogates in general. Since I don't believe there should be speech codes in this election, I'm fine with that.

You say nobody's called out people about their associations with the anti Semite Billy Graham. Is that perhaps because we give religious leaders undo deference?

Wright is a maniac. If other surrogates are fair game, so is he. If he's off limits, so if everyone else. Decide. But MJ, you're defending Wright in saying things that you'd attack other people for saying and you know it.

No matter how you spin it, this is bad stuff that should not play a part in the life of someone I would want as President (or any public office).

I found nothing racist nor personally offensive in anything Wright has said (and evidently neither do the white pastors and church members there!) This is strictly a problem of optics, and, let's be honest here, white racism is the reason why it's perceived as a problem. If that offends you- go look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself why it does. You're probably part of the problem.

Nonetheless, it IS a problem, and since I want Obama to be elected, I want him to find a way to neutralize it. And soon- it can't be allowed to fester.

Were it so that the majority of American voters was able, or willing, to see through the tactics of and the strategies used by political operatives to smear opponents, Obama wouldn't have to give a speech 'clarifying' his religious beliefs etc.

A gullable, uninformed, uneducated populace is, finally, what will doom any democracy.

And then there are the media devoting hundreds of hours of air time making sure that smear operators get their messages across. They know better which mades their participation in the whole drama even more heinous.

My second post on this subject, sorry for the trouble but:

Please don't make the mistake of spinning this as anything to do with religion. The remarks and ranting I saw coming from this person had nothing to do with any religion that I know anything about. They were extremely racial, radical, paranoid, and ignorant political rantings.

I left a church where I was a member in 2004 after a pastor was hired that saw the pulpit as a political platform rather than a religious one.

Where is the IRS to examine the tax exempt status of this "church"?

The remarks and ranting I saw coming from this person had nothing to do with any religion that I know anything about.

funny... I have been drafting a daily kos diary called "My Rabbi and Obama's Minister" along similar lines. Many Jews attend services at synagogues where the Rabbis say things that might shock outsiders... not just about Israel and Arabs and peace, but also about the goyim in general, antisemitism, need to stay Jewish, what it means to be Jewish in America, and intermarriage, etc. etc.

Where I disagree with MJ is about choosing/staying in a congregton where the message from the pulpit is one I disagree with. My fondest memory from around my post-bar mitzvah confirmation time is my Rabbi thiundering against Reagan. I have left congregations where the Rabbi was too hardline on middle east peace.

I'm a white, church-going, Democratic protestant who has lived in the red, red South all my life. I can't remember the last time I agreed with everything my minister said, preached, or believed. (And that includes the beliefs of my Associate Reformed Presbyterian preacher-Grandaddy!) I imagine it's the same way for Obama.

Unfortunately, though, the stridency with which Obama's minister makes some very legitimate points will play like red meat to the dogs in areas down here (and in central Pennsylvania. Hmmm...). That said, some of the things I've heard his minister say are just downright whacky. Obama will have his hands full dealing with this issue. I believe Rev. Wright will be Obama's biggest weakness and threat to getting elected.

It would be great if a person's personal religious beliefs were not treated as a political issue. Yet another poison that the Right has instituted into our politics, and the media has wholeheartedly endorsed. That said, it apparently needs to be addressed and put to bed.

What's really depressing is the glee with which Hillary's (allegedly)liberal supporters on this and other left-leaning blogs have run with it.

Obama is absolutely right about one thing: Hillary and her supporters really do seem to enjoy the irrelevant, distracting, "gotcha" type of politics that they wwere wailing about the last fifteen years.

Barak Obama claims that he is a great community organizer, that he can bring people together. After watching a video where his community stands up and applauds this monster speeches about 911, a reasonable person can come only to a conclusion that Obama has failed as a community organizer. He is a fraud.
On another issue, go back and take a fresh look at Michelle famous “first time she's really proud of her country”. Now we understand that she didn’t misspoke. She and her husband are the product of the indoctrination by W over 20 years.

Speaking as a white New England Unitarian, YAWN! We New Englanders learned not to give a damn about other people's religion, or what they were saying, and mind our own damn business.

When is the rest of the country going to catch up?

I saw a video of one of Wright's sermons and it was controversial to say the least. If anyone thinks it wasn't;

Imagine Obama giving that sermon as a speech.

As a white guy let me say this: All the whiteys in the MSM sure are pushing this Wright story, its all over the web, the TV and in Print.
(This is not to say black media types aren't covering it).

That McCain solicited and appeared with Hagee and now has another Evangelical nutcase named Rod Parsley as his "spriitual advisor" a study should be in order;

How many stories on Obama/Wright, and how many stories on McCain/Hagee/Parsley will we see in the MSM?

We've already seen Russert in action the week of the last debate. He grilled Obama on Farakhan/Wright and on the following Sunday's MTP he ignored the McCain/Hagee story even when it was mentioned by one of the guests.

FloridaNative, again I say it's clearly been a long time since you've read the Gospels. Let's start with a choice bit of Matthew 23:

23: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24: Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26: Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28: Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30: And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31: Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
32: Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33: Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Jesus was a radical. He was not called to comfort the comfortable.

I saw the video yesterday on ABC in GMA program. I was shocked. I even think Barack Obama and Michelle Obama has been brain washed by hearing these hatred speeches from this pastor for 20 years. Him not wearing a US Flag Pin http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3690000 and Michelle's comment that she is not proud of America until now http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-02-19-michelle-obama_N.htm are strong evidence that the damage has been done permanently in thier brains. What a shame?

I understand all the arguments stating that just because he is his minister doesn't mean he agrees with everything he says BUT...

Obama wouldn't have been attending his sermons and associating with the minister for so long if he was completely against the minister's outrageous views and opinions. Another sermon shows minister Wright claiming that the government brought HIV to America to damage the black population; if my minister said something that despicable, I'd consider switching churches.

Also, Obama claims that his lack of experience is made up for by his judgment. What kind of judgment does this show?