is that we seem to have a very good glimpse at the life of Barrack Obama prior to the Wright scandal and none of his actions, even when he was closest to him, show any of hate and militancy those carefully selected sound bites implied and yet people that on Tuesday believed Obama to be a good and honest person, on Wednesday made such huge leaps to embrace the worst.

I have to tell you that my first view of the clips was shocking until I shut off the emotions and began to ask some simple questions. If what I was seeing was truly the embodiment of Rev. Wright then how could Obama have been closely tied? Occam's Razor came immediately to mind. The complexity of Obama trying to conceal some dark and angry side all those years made no sense. The truth had to be that we were being treated to an incomplete picture of Wright. I made a conscious effort to shut off my desire for Obama to become President and tried to analyze what we were seeing in the most objective manner I could. I asked a number of questions of myself.

1. Were there any looney or outrageous people in my life that I held dear because their good so outweighed their bad parts? Answer - many and often those people were amazing individuals that learned their outrage could be used to get their foot in the door but had hearts of gold and could often be counted on when the folks that never used outrage let me down.

2. Did the good people I'd come across in life who's lives paralleled Obama's put up with truly evil people? Answer - no, not at all. They shunned them like the plague if they had no redeeming features.

3. Did the media and Obama's opponents have reason to overblow the "scandal"? I think that answer is obvious given the media's largely conservative ownership and the fact that at the time Obama was surging ahead of all others.

4. Was anything Wright was saying in the video clips fundamentally wrong? Answer - I only heard one snippet that had that hint of anomylism - his contention that the AIDS epidemic was a government plot to kill minorities and the paranoia there is certainly justifiable given the history the blacks in America have endured (see syphillis experiments on blacks). As a volunteer military veteran during the Vietnam War, Wright certainly earned the right to speak out against that mess and had justifiable anger over our killing of innocents during that misadventure.

5. Were Wright's congregations rioting in the Chicago streets? Answer - as far as I could tell no, they were doing exactly the opposite, trying to build up their neighborhoods and help one another.

Soon after that introspection Obama came out with his historic speech and basically nailed the answers I'd come up with. I read accounts from others that had had experiences with Wright and they believed him to be a kind and honest man.

Why do we stop questioning motives and logic when we're treated to these outrageous slams against any of the candidates? Is there something in us that craves the conflict and loves to see people go down in flames? I actually came to McCain's defense the other day even though I despise the man because someone was questioning the application of the word "hero" for his experiences in Vietnam.

It's still my contention that if we don't stop this type of activity we're guaranteeing ourselves plastic stick figures for our political leaders, people that are so boring they have no warts, or such good liars that we never find out.

Art