That statement shows that she's incredibly tone deaf on black people. We stay with our churches/mosques. That's community. When you move to a new city, one of the first things many black people do is look for a house of worship to anchor themselves.

My grandmother, before she passed away in '05, was a member of the same church she joined when she first moved to Kansas City back in the 30s. The other church she joined (I have a very religious family) in the 60s she never wavered even when she didn't care for the pastors. My father, who is a preacher, still goes to the same church he went to as a child and he couldn't stand most of the other pastors.

I went to the same 3 mosques when we moved to LA in '81. I still go to those same 3 mosques and that's included some stupid, lame and hateful imams. Most of my friends who are 26 - 58 years old, go to the same churches they went to as children or went they first moved to Los Angeles. Leaving? Pastor would have had to been found snorting coke off a dead male hooker's sack to get people to leave.

Hillary Clinton: suicide bomber? She has to assume people are going to bring this stuff up. She has to assume that we she criticizes the personal relationships of others, she's inviting criticism of her own. Maybe she's trying to lose.

And I agree with fabooj. It struck me as incredibly presumptuous when she said she'd just quit the church. Even as an outsider, she would know that there's probably a community there you don't just up and quit. She's not an idiot. But she's relying on others to be idiots for her.

Brilliant comment. It sums up exactly what I have been feeling since Hillary broke her 3 week silence to criticize Obama for standing by his Pastor in her interview with Richard Mellon Scaife and his crack team of former-Clinton bashing wingnuts who are looking for some fresh ammo to use on Obama in the general election. Put aside the bizarre choice of an audience to whom she offered up this particular attack, and piut aside her obvious motive, which was to distract attention from the Snipergate gaffe (actually, let's call it what it really is -- a conscious lie told at least 3 or 4 times, with additional false details added in each time, an that apparently represents the tip of an iceberg in that regard) that threatens her very candidacy. All of that is politics -- a particularly heinous form of politics, IMHO -- but on some level understandable given the formidable challenge she faces.

But to not recognize in Obama's decision to stay with Trinity United and its Pastor, Dr. Wright, the same impulses that gave rise to her own decision to stay with Bill despite all of his flaws (not to mention his repeated public humiliations of her), is a real triumph of political opportunism over grace, and a very saddening event given that it involves someone who I admired quite a bit, for years, and as recently as only a few months ago. For her to caste aspersions at Obama for staying with a Church whose highly respected pastor has been tarnished unfairly by approximately 20-30 minutes of intensely inflammatory rhetoric (OK, add a few whacky conspiracy theories to that) over an otherwise illustrious 40 year career devoted to serving his community and congregation -- and who spoke up for her husband when he was under attack at the deepest depths of the Lewinsky scandal -- when she herself has stayed in a marriage with a serial adulterer who publicly humilated her on numerous occasions (which is as warped a way of summing up the totality of their marriage and lives as the Fox News sound-bite loop is in summing up the totality Dr. Wright and the church he led until his retirement earlier this year). Who is she to throw that particular stone, given her continued association with a man who, despite his greatness, is also so unbelievably flawed and has acted so badly towards her.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Hillary now finds herself in the company of Scaife, Limbaugh, Buchanan and Scarborough, Drudge, Krauthammer and others who have been her arch-enemies over the years. I guess she thinks we are stupid enough to believe that this is because she actually has appeal across party lines -- but really what it is is a Faustian bargain with the right wing devil himself, in order to save her campaign and destroy a candidate who has so completely eclipsed her that it is now personal, nothing short of his complete destruction will do. Can that be it? Is this the same person I used to admire? I wish I knew, but I don't think Im going to like the answer.