A leader is confident and determines his/her position in society.

 What I love most is white liberals spinning this to something it's not.  

Now I don't think that is true, but that sure sounds like what is being said. Also, it blows Obama's last version of Rev. Wright as just a paster right out of the water.

Plus, the longer he was in the US Senate, the more would be known about him -- and the narrative would be more difficult to create that squared with known facts.

I'm still wondering why, with a thinnish resume, Obama would not include his work as the chair of the board of an educational charity/think tank, a job which paid him handsomely.

Why did Obama choose that church instead of any other church? He says so in his own writing--the initial sermon talked about how "white folks' greed" runs the world.

Black liberation theology is the almost the whole point of Trinity UCC, and the whole point of Obama joining it.

Very few people will buy that Obama didn't know about the church's views. It strains common sense and is quite frankly an insult to one's intelligence.

Frankly, I have no idea what Obama's current position is. When the Wright stuff, first came out, he decided to lecture us in the Greatest Speech Ever Given, teaching us poor fools that we were overreacting and that everything needed to be seen in the context of our history.

A few weeks later, he tosses Wright overboard.

In time, she found one: her own.  "There is the Church of Oprah now," said her longtime friend, with a laugh. "She has her own following."

One (simplistic and limited) way of viewing the results of the Democratic primary is through pure demographics. With Obama having a lock on the African American vote, anyone hoping to defeat him would have to amass a pretty large majority on the remaining vote. For example, if the AA vote is 20% of the Dem vote, then someone else would have to win by well over 20 points among the remainder. This is pretty much an impossible margin against a reasonable candidate such as Obama, and Hillary Clinton has done well to even get close.

Obviously this isn't the only way of looking at the demographics of the race. One could make a similar argument concerning women, for example.

There's nothing wrong with African Americans supporting Obama in such large numbers; given our country's history and current state, it's a natural and honorable expression of solidarity or pride. In the wake of the Wright business, however, I've seen some black commentators ask whether this loyalty has been given too easily, and I'm curious what other people think.

In the views I've seen expressed, these African Americans worry that giving him 90% of their votes without him even having to ask allows him to focus exclusively on getting white/other votes. The results range from the substantive to the cosmetic: He hasn't focused on issues particularly pertinent to the AA community (poverty, New Orleans, HIV etc.), he's skipped events such as the State of the Black Union, his staff tends to stage campaign events to show off his white support (a throwaway line in an NYT article mentioned how while one NC crowd was quite diverse, the seats that would appear on TV were filled with a lot of white people), etc.

The question then is whether what he'll do for the AA community as president. Will he pay more attention once he's in office? Or will he continue to focus on the swing voters he perceives as requiring more care and feeding?

America listened to Reverend Wright, and they heard a man who has a lot of anger, and projects a lot of negativity toward "the slavemasters," and in his sermons is keeping that anger alive in his parishioners.  They heard him say that he would not call Louis Farrakhan his enemy because Farrakhan was not responsible for putting him in chains.  They heard him say a host of things that were very disturbing to a lot of people.

Okay, I'll buy that some of this is part and parcel of black liberation theology, but how does that translate to the Barack Obama who says he is all about unity?

And how do the American people not wonder which of these two people - Wright or Obama - is being honest?

Mind you, he was a college grad, a community organizer working on the south side Chicago and he still didn't understand the "black experience". (?) Apparently Obama joins not looking for spiritual communion like others suggest, but to better understand the "black experience in America". Obama continues on his "blackness journey" in church making friends and gaining constituents for years. Then Obama decides to run for office. He has gathered a large constituency and mentors of all sorts. He's got one in real estate where money abounds. One in the pulpit with his 8,000 members.  He's even got Daley patting his back. The patrons list kept growing. Ayers is one name. Obama slices and dices as he advances his game.

What did Obama learn about his "black experience in America"? He learned how to use AAs until they got it and didn't seem to mind. He no longer has to talk to Smiley. Obama "blackness" is only relevant when needed. He's a symbol of their hopes more than he delivered action for their needs.

What Obama really learned was not about the "black experience" at all. He learned the art of politics. He learned that loyalty has its limits. Alice Palmer thrown away. His "typical white" grandmother discarded to the media hounds when his political fortunes needed a rebound. His Pastor is no longer mentor simply demented when Wright's voice rang too loud. His money man, Rezko, may have laundered bucks, land and the south side all while Obama blindly bought a place to reside.

This comment is directed at Indy33 especially who wrote a fallacious and insulting comment which has since been deleted.

As for Obama joining the chiurch to become black, shockingly and wrongly, it was his own campaign advisor who is saying it.

It is horrible.

That is why I am condemning it in this post.

--According to two sources, Winfrey . . . .
said one longtime friend, who requested anonymity . . . .
   --a former business associate, who also asked for anonymity. . . .
   --friends say she was blindsided . . . .
   --said her close friend . . . .

--said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named . . . .

There was a recent article in Time about Barack's mother. Her high school friend said that after Barack wrote his first book, she asked his mother if she was hurt by the book being almost entirely about the man who fathered, but abandoned him so early in his life. She said his mother's response was that Barack had to deal with these issues in his own way.  I raised two children whose father abandoned them early in life, it leaves terrible holes in identity.