Nobody put words in Wright’s mouth. Nobody did a fake voice-over. Wright’s white America didn’t conspire and drug him and hypnotize him before his sermons.

Honestly, when I heard his words I felt nauseous and wanted to vomit. This guy is keeping his folks down with sick, conspiracy; hate filled theories just like Farrakhan. Furthermore, only by going to HIS church and paying attention to HIS sick “charismatic” rantings can “believers” find out the TRUTH. This ABSOLUTELY reflects on the sort of person Obama IS. It’s no wonder Barak wants to create “unity”. Look at the world view of his divisive pastor who preaches DIS-unity. Wright’s a real life, black Archie Bunker and a throwback to ancient times. No wonder Obama wants “change!”.

Suggestion: Obama, You want “unity & change? Start at home and end the racism endemic in your provincial community before venturing out into America and preaching to us about “hope” & “change” based on false & empty promises. You’ve turned out to be just another old fashioned hack black “leader”; The kind that constantly evokes the name of MLK and tries to ride his coat tails. But MLK, HE was a true American hero & PATRIOT. He would collapse in despair if he had to listen through a divisive, racist, hate filled sermon by the likes of Wright.

Personally…I’m nauseous. The last thing I would want to hear on a Sunday morning is some sick clown dancing on a stage and “charismatically” telling me why we deserved 9/11. But the first thing Obama & his co-worshipers want to do on any given Sunday was go see THIS guy.

The shallow wake of controversy churned up this week over statements by Jeremiah Wright and Geraldine Ferarro have a common engine that’s running on fumes. Both come from, and spoke from, a political and personal perspective born of each’s own experience. That experience is their shared one of a generational bond. Having come of age in the era of the struggle for, and against, civil rights, they see the world through race -colored glasses. To be sure, Wright’s talk is more plainly inflammatory than that of Ferraro’s. Ferarro’s statements, though meant to be more politically correct were somehow more pathetic, since she seemed self-righteously unable to recognize the irony of her words. Both are stuck in the now faded print of a history chapter in which issues of black and white, were…well, more black and white. The African Americans of Wright’s generation sang ‘we shall overcome’; The white America of Ferarro’s generation was the object of that anthem. This is not to suggest that Ferarro’s politics were prejudiced during her day. To the contrary, she was a symbol of the progressive stance of her party. But she, and he both, more instinctively see race as relevant than do younger Americans.

I am now firmly ensconced in middle age, and as a white male of that vintage, I hardly represent the view of a “new” , post-racial generation. Yet, I sense a lot of Wright and Ferraro lingering (or smoldering) in many folks separated from me by a mere decade of extra age. It shows up even in statements by some highly regarded statesmen of their generation, those who should “know better”. Ed Rendell states that Obama can’t win in Pennsylvania because Lynn Swann didn’t fare well here. What Lynn Swann and Barak Obama have in common, other than the color of their skin, is unfathomable- it is certainly not their politics. Bill Clinton, the most silver tongued diplomat of them all was perhaps the most astonishingly monochromatic in his apparently innocent equation of Barak Obama to Jesse Jackson. These are the “progressive” politicians of the past who are in some ways ironically stuck stuck there in their view of today’s elections. They have been willing, and apparently eager, to analyze the elections on the basis of race, not because they are bigots, but because the politics of race was so much more relevant during their day in the political sun. I am inclined to believe that those writers who proclaim that Ferarro was just speaking the truth are, likewise, from a generation that sees race as more relevant than do their younger journalistic peers.

Am I so naive as to think that race has become irrelevant? No, but one can not but see, and be heartened to see, that its relevance has been greatly diminished given the plain facts of this year’s primaries. The electorate of today’s millennium, thankfully, don’t live in a black and white world in the way that these elder statesmen once did. There are, no doubt, parts of the country were the cultural divide is as great as ever, and this has more to do with economics than with race; but to define a presidential candidate by his race is an anachronistic exercise to many of today’s new voters, as the votes plainly tell.

No doubt, in another ten years, I’ll be stuck on an issue or point of view, that is of little relevance to my child, and of none to hers. The present is never perfect, and sometimes too easily forgets its precedents, but the politics of race are finally and fortunately fading to a thing of the past.