I guarantee you if white ethnic groups in the US had been exposed to the treatment that African Americans have received over the past 400 years you would hear things that make Rev. Wright seem tame.

Thank you for that perspective - I'm just a little younger than Wright and remember all those searing things, although from the perspective of someone in a 'safe' white family. Still, even I can feel blistering anger about all of that. Emmitt Till's murder was a turning point for the consciences of many whites -- and the resistance of many blacks. I wonder if the Life Magazine story -- and photo!! -- are available online somewhere. It might make it easier for others to understand how deep the anger of someone just that young boy's age would feel.

That said, Wright's comments on the videoclips are, without question, unacceptable and distorted, especially in that they carry no recognition of the very real and almost unbelieveable changes that have occurred or any hope for the future. When you compare those diatribes to other earlier sermons like The Audacity of Hope - http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/for-the-record.html#more
- it sounds to me like someone who may have been controversial and passionate all along but who, with age and returning to early emotions, has become rigid and irrational.

The real question, so far as assessing Obama's long relationship and what it means, is what Wright was saying last year, and the year before, and for all those earlier years. No one seems to be asking that question, however -- just assuming as if it had been proven somewhere (instead of being denied by Obama) that Wright spewed that level of venom every Sunday for 20 years while Obama sat nodding and never raising an objection. It's sad - making a briefly skectched cartoon out of all the richness and depth of a truly human life.