"Barack Hussein Obama ...

"His pastor says 'God Damn America' [Wright]

"One of his friends declared war on America {Bernardine Dohrn]

"Another friend bombed government buildings [Bill Ayers]

"Another preaches hatred against homosexuals [McClurkin]

"Another is under indictment for raising campaign funds illegally for Barack Obama [Rezko]

"And his top advisor is in the inner circle of Chicago's notorious Daley political machine [Axelrod]

"Do you want Barack Obama and his friends running your government?"

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It would be insane for her to demagogue Obama's minister for votes.  Even her surrogates have been on their best behavior.  You better believe the word went out.

The Right, with the cooperation of the Hillary-haters on the left, has done a great job of smearing Obama during this primary while leaving Hillary's fingerprints all over it.

They did this when the Washington Times ran with the madrassa smear several months ago, claiming that Hillary's people had been pushing the story.  Somehow people decided that while they were lying about every detail of the underlying story, they were 100% credible when they blamed Hillary for it.

They did this just a few weeks ago when Drudge blamed the Clinton campaign for pushing the turban picture.  Once again, certain people on the left decided that Drudge was a 100% credible source.  Shamefully, Obama himself went around Mississippi blaming the Clinton campaign for that one, based upon nothing more than an uncorroborated report by Drudge.

The one talking point over at the Orange that drives me to distraction is that A Certain Campaign is responsible for every news report, story or commentary criticizing (aka "attacking") A Certain Candidate via leaks, surrogates and other covert means.

It sounds like serious tinfoil territory to me to suggest that anyone can control the media to that extent, yet some apparently believe anything that fits into their chosen narrative.

It seems inevitable to me that more will emerge and Obama's claim to ignorance will become untenable.

Also, the threats by Brazile to leave the party and Sharpton to march on the DNC, have sowed the seeds of the Dems losing the AA community  if Obama is not the nominee for obvious but unstated reasons. Rock and a hard place especially if Obama does not get the nomination due to his religious affiliation.

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama."

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."

As time marches on, it becomes less important as a location but more fond in terms of history as many bloggers started there but clearly they too have seen that continued participation on DK tends to be counter productive.

I hold no malice towards any of them and there are some very bright and articulate people who frequent the place.

African-American history, Afrocentric histories, are not taught sufficiently in the public schools. Rev. Wright's sermons produce a historical memory for African-Americans remind them, and should all Americans, of what is too often forgotton: our country was built on slavery, segregation, and violence as much, if not more, than freedom, social mobility, and reason. Historical memories are not always accurate, often emotional, but when the wider culture refuses to address its continued inequities (as it has since the Nixon-Reagan political realignment), this makes sense to me...

In general, I'm dismayed at the lengths that many (NOT ALL) Obama supporters will go to rationalize Wright's statements.

May I say that you're missing the forest for the trees?

It's not that some of Obama's admirers are ready to justify both Wright's remarks and praise Obama's dilatory regretfulness over them.  

It's not even that some of Obama's surrogates & supporters habitually do this--i.e., first justify ("The deal with Rezco was perfectly legal, and there was no quid pro quo") and then praise the dilatory regretfulness ("He admitted his lapses in judgment, what candor, what transparency!").  

It's that the Obama movement depends on the idea that any racism in the campaign can come only from the Clinton camp.  

Thus, Wright's remarks are re-defined as merely that old reliable--fiery (but harmless) black populist chatter, just our own homey up-to-date version of Malcolm, or Stokely, or Eldridge, or Angela.  And anyway, Wright's a Man of God--he's not marching in the streets with an AK-47.  Case closed.

It worried me because Obama is likely the nominee - and he's only getting vetted now, when odds are we're stuck with him.  If this had been big news last winter, I think it's very unlikely he'd be the probable nominee.

So how to explain the timing?  My thought are that the MSM and the right wing simply held back - the MSM because they wanted someone to take out Clinton and the right wing because 1) ditto and 2) they knew they could go to town on this at any time.

Wayne Barrett at the Village Voice actually makes a very effective case for this (although not about Wright per se).  He finds many cases where folks like George Will and Hannity were applauding Obama early on and are turning on him now.

He graduated from Columbia with a double major in English literature and political science, and a determination to "organize black folks. At the grass roots." He wrote scores of letters looking for the right job, and almost a year later got an offer to come to Chicago. He gave up a job as a financial writer with an international consulting firm and became a $1,000-a-month community organizer. Here in Chicago, Obama worked as lead organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a campaign funded by south-side Catholic churches to counteract the dislocation and massive unemployment caused by the closing and downsizing of southeast Chicago steel plants. From 1984 to '88 Obama built an organization in Roseland and the nearby Altgeld Gardens public housing complex that mobilized hundreds of citizens. Obama says the campaign experienced "modest successes" in winning residents a place at the table where a job-training facility was launched, asbestos and lead paint were negotiated out of the local schools, and community interests were guarded in the development of the area's landfills.