The Barack Backlash

With Wright getting roughed up by the left and right, the Nation's John Nichols offers a more sympathetic view:

"This former Marine who became an remarkably-successful and widely-respected religious leader is in possession of the balm that has frequently proven to be the cure for what ails America -- an eyes-wide-open faith in the prospect that this country can and will put aside the sins of the past and forge a future that is as just as it is righteous . . .

"Not all of what Wright says is comforting. His views are not universally appealing, nor are they or should they be seen as unassailable. But, for the most part, they are well much within the mainstream of American religious and political discourse.

"The problem is not Jeremiah Wright. The problem is a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune -- and a media that willingly invites manipulation."

Seems to me Wright did a pretty good job of assassinating his own reputation.

Michelle Malkin pulls no punches in pummeling Obama's belated realization about the reverend:

"What a load of pure unadulterated horse manure. Anyone with eyes can see that Wright's performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His anti-white, anti-American, 'imperialist'-bashing shtick was not developed overnight or over the past few years. He's been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He's been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He's been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He's been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.

"Obama's best-selling Audacity of Hope is named after the first sermon of Wright's that he heard -- decades ago -- in which the pastor of racial resentment inveighed against an environment 'where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere.' Yet, only now has Obama concluded that Wright's sermons are 'a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth.'

"Welcome to the Jive-Talk Express."

To HuffPoster Bob Cesca, though, the media are going wild over a "nothing story":

"If the corporate media had been as diligent about watchdogging President Bush as they have been about watchdogging Reverend Wright, it's very likely we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

"If the corporate media had spent as much time exposing the obvious flaws and grotesque inequalities of Reaganomics throughout the last 30 years as they've spent on Wright, we wouldn't necessarily be staring into the maw of another depression."