Twenty years too late, Senator Obama

Barack Obama has been under fire lately for the incindiary pulpit rhetoric of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

If you've heard the sermons of this fire breather, it's hard not to wonder how it was that Obama could have attended the church for 20 years, have a close spiritual relationship with this pastor, and consider him a mentor.

Rev. Wright is clearly a racist, and stridently anti-American. As excerpts from his sermons made their rounds for a couple weeks, I was surprised by Obama's silence. He barely bothered to distance himself from the guy. In the backdrop of Michele O'Bama's strange comment about never being proud of America until now, it did kind of make sense.

Yesterday Senator Obama finally came out and denounced Rev. Wright's comments in a post on the liberal blog Huffington Post. That's all well and good, but it left me a bit cold, with a few remaining questions:

- He says "I strongly condemn the statements." Fine. But is there any evidence that he expressed this condemnation ever before? In the last decade while Senator Obama was in elected office in Illinois and then the U.S. Senate, did he even one time say publicly that he rejected Rev. Wright's views? Or is this the first time ever, now that he's faced a cascade of public criticism?

- Is it reasonable to believe that Rev. Wright has been Senator Obama's mentor and spiritual leader and close personal friend for 20 years, so close that Obama's book is even named after one of Wright's sermons, even though Obama rejects Wright's racist and anti American views? How many mentors do YOU have who are racist and anti-American? It makes no sense that if Obama truly condemns such views he would maintain a close mentor relationship with the man who holds and professes them.

- Does Senator Obama have any other close personal relationships with people who think white America is the enemy? If so, he might as well bring it out now.

The fact is that Barack Obama spent his formative years in an environment where such racist and anti-American views were not considered at all extraordinary or out of the mainstream. I know that environment well - I lived for several years in his Chicago senate district.

He's having trouble distancing himself from this particular black urban sub-culture because he was part of it for the formative years of his life, and it is a part of him. Try as he might to distance himself from it now, he can't hide the fact that he was immersed in it for a couple decades, and used it to rise to the position he now holds.

It isn't quite as useful to his political career now, to say the least. But posting a condemnation on the Huffington Post isn't going to make this go away.

He's got a real problem. He doesn't like America. People who don't like America don't get elected president.