but when you can look through the years of his preaching in total and get a balanced view of what his sermons were like on average, I'll accept your total condemnation of the man.

In the meantime, I'm going to take an ethical candidate (who seems to not be a "seditionist") at his word and the fact that the church that Wright preached at never broke out into riots in the street to deduce that these were extremely isolated incidents and not indicitive of the man as a whole.

Think of what you're asking of Obama to detail out each particular item of contention and explain his feelings about all of them. Hell Jody, he might as well just replay the videos during his speech to reinforce the message the people that leaked them intended.

No, his speech was spot on. It was about what brought out the anger in people like Rev. Wright in the first place, something our "experienced" leaders don't seem to understand in the least or they wouldn't have voted authorization for Bush to have attacked Iraq and unleashed the wrath of the Middle East and the rest of the world against us.

But here's some news for you. I have had outbursts equally as abhorrent as anything Wright said when my anger and frustration at life has gotten the best of me. Had I been in the middle of a sermon at the time those emotions boiled over I very likely could have said those horrific things publicly.

One thing everyone's forgetting though is that many of the things Wright said had real truth to them. Over the years of our existance the United States has done unimaginable wrongs to others in the world and created huge disparities between the classes of society. I doubt the AIDS epidemic was some government sponsored program targeting blacks but let's remember that blacks were the subject of unethical syphillis testing in the past that caused the agonizing deaths of countless humans. I'm told if you view the entire sermon where Wright is shouting "God damn America" the context of where he got to makes much more sense because he begins by praising the potential for goodness in this country and ends up with damning it for not living up to its standards.

What the man sounds like is someone who allows his emotions from time to time to hinder his own very ethical and uplifting message and one who allows himself to fall prey to ridiculous conspiracy theories when he feels powerless. Oops, he's human.

Jody, I have friends and acquaintances that have lived bizarre lifestyles and spouted racist and homophobic tirades from time to time and privately I challenge them. They also though are some of my most trusted companions because they wear their emotions proudly and honestly. What you see is what you get. In those same folks I've seen unimaginable giving and compassion when my "normal" friends were nowhere to be found. Should I just dump them?

Art