The problem then becomes what has Obama and Wright talked about privately in the past, what has Obama confessed to Wright over the 20 years?

Hell, what if Wright started outright lying about Obama? I bet the country would believe Wright.

Uh... when Oedipus overthrew King Laius things did not work out so well for that MoFo.

Maybe you've just chosen a bad metaphor but having been on both sides of Obama my feeling is that people are always trying to get him to "reject and denounce" his associates, influences, anyone. And it makes Obama look weak when he does. When he fired an advisor for calling Clinton a monster I felt like he played right into Clinton's staff. You don't let your opponents tell you who you can associate with, hire, fire, like or dislike. You have to stand on your own on those decisions.

Obama really won me over with his initial reaction to the Wright controversey. They could not make him denounce his friend and mentor then. I hope they can't make him do so now.

In full disclosure, let me say for the record that I am a Clinton supporter.

That said, let me add that I take a certain pride in generally avoiding cheap-shots and "gotcha" as best I can. Politics being the rough business it is, I'm sure I don't always succeed, but I try my best.

I think Mr. Gitlin is correct on Rev. Wright/Sen. Obama in a theoretical sense, but how does one accomplish that seperation in a practical, real-world sense? The more Obama refutes the specifics of Wright's ideas, the more I am reminded that he, his wife, and his children spent 20 years in Wright's church. The worse he makes Wright out to be NOW, the LESS sense those 20 years make. It is also difficult to avoid the sense that his newly-discovered regrets are tactical, and not necesarily deeply felt. Much better had he seen this light BEFORE running for President.

ANY of us can be put into some very difficult binds by the nature of our associations. Whether we like it or not, or even whether it's entirely fair or not, it is a time-honored tradition to judge people to some degree by who they hang-out with. I sincerely believe that this isn't the LAST time Sen. Obama is going to have this problem. He has a number of relationships that may seem OK in the context of local Chicago society and politics, but which are (at best) problematic in a Presidential candidate.

I think that the suggestion that Obama has INSUFFICIENTLY distinguished himself from Wright is misplaced. Obama will only alienate more of his progressive constituency by trying to throw Wright under a bus, though on the other hand, I have no sympathy with those who try to prettify Wright's message into something it is not; I agree with Gitlin that, any way you slice it, Wright is WRONG.

But the problem is not with Obama and Wright, it is with the temptation (which Hillary Clinton even tried in one debate in a perverse semantic game regarding Obama and Farrakhan) to link Obama to third parties to scare the public. Obama I think adroitly handled the issue in his speech, and now, rather than stirring the conflict with more media-generating controversy, Obama's tendency to insist on moving beyond the distractions of Ayers, Wright (and whoever is added to the cast of this drama of misdirection) is the right instinct. Like someone yanking at the leash of a dog that absolutely INSISTS on extensively sniffing out EVERY fire hydrant, Obama needs to use (or continue to use) his bully pulpit to yank the mainstream media away from its ABC-debate type proclivities.

Perhaps one thing Obama could do is to schedule yet another debate, possibly an early one with McCain once it becomes clear that Obama and McCain are the presumptive nominees (something I predict will happen before the end of May, but my predictions have been wrong before -- 'an invasion of Grenada? And people call ME delusional?'); in this debate, the ground rules will be NO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HORSE-RACE, ABOUT SOUND BITES, ABOUT 'character' and scandal, but ONLY about issues issues, platform, and more issues. You notice how the 'town meeting' type debates tended to focus more on substance, including on environmental issues, than the press-sponsored debates? The dog of the MSM needs to be yanked, and yanked and yanked and yanked, in the proportion that MY chain gets yanked, but that's a whole other tale. And progressive critics of the media both in the mainstream and out of it (the latter possibly with major demonstrations planned targetting the MSM as the huge part of the machinery of our system that it is) need to join in a chorus of insistence on a more substantive politics.

If not Wright, Sistah Souljah, Louis Farrakhan, Bill Ayers, flag pins, or "bitter" bytes, surely a politics revolving around a mainstream media devoted to glittering triviality inevitably finds the baubles that it seeks. Only by adamantly insisting on putting the structure of debate, as Obama's tendency tends to be, on a firm footing of solving problems rather than scoring points will Wright and the "Wright Syndrome" be overcome.