Collateral Damage

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder takes a stand against mind-reading:

"Already, though, the cable news coverage of Obama's speech is off on a different tangent: psychological pornography. They're scrutinizing the thoughts behind the thinking; whether Wright felt Obama was an ungrateful upstart; whether Obama felt betrayed by Wright; whether Obama is more embarrassed than ashamed."

Has the story peaked? That's the question posed by National Review's Byron York:

"Now that Obama has further distanced himself from Rev. Wright, I think you'll see a determined effort on the part of his campaign and its advocates in the press to declare the matter over . . .

"Watching Rev. Wright for the last few days, watching the fluidity with which he moved from educational theories to musical theories to racial theories, it's hard to believe that that material hasn't been in the sermons Obama has heard Wright preach over the last 20 years, so I'm skeptical about Obama's new outrage over Wright's words. At the very least, I'd like to know more about what Wright taught Obama."

At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff wonders what took the senator so long:

"Obama's concession (finally) that Wright is beyond the pale arguably raises more acutely than ever the question of how this hatemongering crackpot could have been Obama's spiritual mentor for nearly 20 years."

Salon Editor Joan Walsh admits error in sizing up the reverend:

"I regret that I hedged my observation about Wright's narcissism. He may be wounded, but this is a man of enormous self-regard, and he's clearly trying to hurt Barack Obama. His national rehabilitation tour started fairly sympathetically with the Moyers conversation, but it's devolved into self-pity and self-glorification ever since. His Sunday night talk to the NAACP was mostly silly, from the questionable science behind his insistence that black children are right-brained (creative) while white children are left-brained (logical and analytical) to his mocking the way white people talk, dance, clap, worship and sing.

"I understand and agree with Wright's notion that 'different is not deficient,' but mocking white people, including JFK and LBJ, doesn't seem like the best way to get his point across (yes, he was talking to the NAACP, but he knew -- and relished -- that he had a national audience). At his Monday speech he insisted attacks on him were really an attack on the black church, a typically Wright-centric view of the world, while his security was reportedly provided by the Nation of Islam.

"Let me say that I don't believe Barack Obama believes any of the offensive things Wright said or reiterated on his revenge tour: that the government gave black people AIDS, that the black and white children are different in the way Wright says, that 9/11 was an example of Jesus' teaching 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' But questions will dog Obama about how someone with his expansive view of racial justice sat in a pew listening to Wright for 20 years.

"Unfortunately, Obama's best defense is probably a politically unpalatable truth: He didn't pay that much attention."