Obama-minister story has legs

To the surprise of the mass media, the story of the radical, racist, anti-America views of Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has developed legs and continues to be a hot topic on TV and radio talk shows. This cannot be helpful to Obama's tight race with Hillary Clinton.

In fact, it is probably being fed behind the scenes by veteran Clinton operatives through their connections to media stars. They don't call CNN the Clinton News Network for nothing.

The other thing keeping the story alive is Obama's incredible, pallid response. He sounds like Bubba talking about Monica (it depends on what the meaning of is, is). Claiming that he was not in service on the Sundays Wright preached his most controversial stemwinders, the tapes of which continue to play all hours of the day and night in the media and on the internet, is not credible. With 20 years of membership in the church, with his wedding there and his daughter's baptisms there, he has enough friends who would have been there to alert him if he was missing. Obama's other line, that he wasn't aware until presidential campaign time of Wright's controversial views, doesn't hold water either.

Obama, in trying to deflect rumors that he was raised a Muslim and attended a Muslim school in Indonesia as a small boy, has given several tender interviews early in his campaign about how he found Jesus, praying with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, at his church in Chicago. He also quotes a version in his book The Audacity of Hope, the title of which was authored by Wright.

This is all leading up to Obama's big speech tomorrow in Philadelphia on religion in America. Like Romney's big breakthrough speech at the George Bush Center in Houston on his Mormon religion, Obama is seeking to escape the glare of media scrutiny for his minister's beliefs. Romney probably didn't escape, as evangelicals still considered Mormonism a cult, and it will be interesting to see if Obama is more successful.