MORE VIEWS ON OBAMA

"For the past 15 months he has campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination as a kumbaya-humming racial uniter, yet for the past 20 years he has sat regularly in a church overseen by a racial divider — indeed, as Obama acknowledges, by a racial divider who has doubled as a personal mentor (“like an uncle,” in Obama’s words). Wright officiated at Obama’s wedding. He baptized Obama’s children. He served as a no-pay campaign adviser until quotes from his sermons began circulating on the Internet and Obama, in damage-control mode, urged him to leave.

Yes, but a lot of people in the pews don’t necessarily agree with everything their preachers say.

Of course. Yet a lot of people in the pews do leave (these days are leaving in big numbers) their churches because of the routine message dished out from the pulpit — be it ideological, socio-cultural, liturgical, or whatever. Besides, not many people have mentors with whom they viscerally or deeply disagree." Ross Mackenzie

Mona Charen writes of false equivalence.

Linda Chavez says Obama won't confront biggest problems for blacks and expected more from Barack: "Like many Americans, I had hoped that his candidacy might transcend the racial divide that has separated this country for too many generations. I disagree with Sen. Obama on virtually every important public policy issue, and yet I have watched every televised speech he's made and every debate with a sense of admiration. I want him to succeed in his party's nomination battle, even when I fear, as a staunch Republican, that he might be the more difficult candidate to defeat in November. But he has profoundly disappointed me this week in his major address on race.

The speech, which attempted to quell the furor surrounding his spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, presented an opportunity for Obama to tackle the real issue facing blacks today, which has little to do with race. But instead, Obama fell back on the tired formulas of the past.

But more fundamentally, Obama avoided dealing in any meaningful way with the single most important issue facing the black community -- the breakdown of the black family. And this issue, and its consequences, explains far more about the failure of blacks to thrive today than racism or lack of social spending.

David Limbaugh doesn't think Obama is out of the woods yet.

Barack Obama is nothing if not smooth. He seamlessly turned a would-be apology over his pastor's racism into an indictment against society's racism.

It wasn't, "Jeremiah Wright was wrong, and I was wrong for going to his church for 20 years despite his apparently unforgiving spirit, his racist and anti-American utterances, and his vulgarity, including taking the Lord's name in vain from his very pulpit -- the one venue above all on God's sacred planet that such irreverence is inalterably forbidden. No matter what racial injustices have been perpetrated over the years by mankind toward mankind, they are never an excuse for disrespecting God, and especially in His house."

Instead, Obama said, essentially, "I reject many of Rev. Wright's remarks as divisive and perhaps even unfairly critical of America, but you have to admit, he has a point."

You can talk all you want to about Obama's "audacity of hope" theme, but the only audacity I heard in his speech was his lecturing Americans on their racism instead of explaining his longtime intimate relationship with Wright.