Pew-Wee

How much do Obama’s pastor’s comments matter? There are pundits now convinced that the Pastor Wright YouTubes have rendered Barack Obama unelectable. Some initial polling suggests the Wright controversy may indeed influence voters. Others believe the controversy has been rightly handled or mostly amounts to a distraction and will have little effect on the election.

Some issues on the table: (1) Was Obama lying when he said recently that he wasn’t aware of the nature of Pastor Wright’s comments and/or was he lying earlier in characterizing his relationship with Wright as “deep”? Could the relationship be both deep and unwitting? (2) Would perceptions that Obama is lying in either case— in the matter of the true beliefs of his pastor— significantly affect perceptions among Americans of Obama’s character and his fitness to be president? (3) Are there a significant number of voters disposed to vote for Obama who have now taken enough offense at Pastor Wright’s comments and Obama’s reaction to them to not vote for Obama in the general election… to either not vote or to vote for McCain instead? (4) Does Obama’s relationship to Pastor Wright and Wright’s church, Trinity United, significantly undercut the legitimacy of Obama’s appeals to a post-racial America? (5) Are Pastor Wright’s comments racist and, if so, should they be subject to the same scorn by Obama supporters as have been the witless comments made and repeated by the Clinton campaign’s Geraldine Ferraro?

Obama’s answer to the Pastor Wright controversy was to provide background on how he came to know and respect Reverend Wright and gave assurances that he never heard the man make these kinds of inflammatory comments; never while Obama was “in the pews” of Trinity United Church nor in personal conversation… Already, of course, the nation’s journa-trashdigger-lists are poring through the church calendars and Obama’s travel schedule to see if Obama might have been in a pew and neither daydreaming nor dozing for some of the reverend’s riffs on “Amerikkka.” So far, neocon New York Times columnist and proven hack William Kristol used his perch at the Paper of Record to declare that, indeed, Obama was in attendance for one of the sermons. Kristol wrote a whole column based around this nugget of information-gotcha, only to be proven wrong and made to write a three-sentence retraction complete with typo (“camapaign”)— the retraction as tossed off as the column, because what else would it be? Pee-ew stanky.

A much more insightful and carefully researched analysis was delivered by Tracy Morgan on SNL...