'This is somebody that was preaching three sermons at least a week for 30 years and it got boiled down ... into a half-minute sound clip and just played it over and over and over again, partly because it spoke to some of the racial divisions we have in this country.' Doesn't Obama get it? Every time he contextualizes Wright, he loses. Every time Obama impugns the motives of those who worried over the relationship, he loses. Every time Obama suggests that Wright was a healer whose words were misused by those suspect to inflame ('[it] spoke to some of the racial divisions we have') he loses. Wright's clips indeed did speak to 'racial divisions,' but by slurring whites, Jews, Italians, the WWII generation, and the United States. Other than radical African-Americans, Central American Marxists, Libyans and the Palestinians, almost every one else was fair game. He was not just 'stupid' but cruel and uncouth. He did not misspeak 'five or six' times, as did a Ferraro, a McCain, an Obama himself, or a Clinton on various topics, but systematically offered a written and spoken ideology of separatism and venom. And those who believe that are not themselves trying to do what Wright did. Would that Obama spend as much time criticizing Wright as he does the critics of Wright. The controversy is no longer Wright (whose 20 years of slander and hatred lie like foul verbal IEDs buried deeply amid thousands of words in transcripts and texts, and go off the more the media navigates over them). Nor is the rub just Obama's past comments on Wright or his own landmark speech on race. No, the problem is Obama's continual need to reply to the latest explosion, and his inability to put the issue behind him by a simple clean break. For the next 30 Sundays, someone in Trinity is either going to push the envelope (last Sunday critics of Wright were 'lynchers and crucifiers'), or one of the numerous old mines of the publicity-needy Wright will suddenly go off. (Would it be too much for Obama to communicate to Rev. Moss that for the next seven months, the closely-watched Trinity sermons might stick to universal brotherhood, Christian forgiveness, unity, and healing among all of America's races?) As someone who wants to see Obama present his agenda, defend and debate it, and let the American people decide whether they are ready for such a change leftward, I hope that some sane person in the Obama campaign can simply end this. They need to call an outsider like Juan Williams or Shelby Steele, who have felt the wrath of the radical African-American community, and understand the complexity and the politics of race as few others do, get their blunt advice, and then sever once and for all the Wright relationship. Otherwise toadies and sycophantic insiders will continue to tell Obama what he wants to hear--and we will get a summer full of 'garlic noses' and America as the klan, followed by clarifications like 'five or six minutes,' 'snippets,' 'loops,' and 'typical white person.'