Pretty devastating critique in today’s TNR:

As the son of a Baptist minister, I can attest that Wright is and was an extreme aberration from how the overwhelming majority of black Christians worship. In church, black people hear about Peter, Paul, Mary, and how to get into heaven. How to forgive. How to love. Not how to vote.

But here was Barack suggesting that Wright’s behavior was commonplace in black churches: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” He generalized Wright’s ridiculousness to distract from his individual choice to worship under a buffoon for two decades. I have a cousin who attended Wright’s church for three weeks and then left, never to return. She had no interest in hearing his nonsense from the pulpit.

Barack obscured the true nature of black religious life because, to do otherwise, he would have had to answer the question, “Why are you a member of a church that is this racially divisive and such a sharp aberration to how the rest of black people worship?”

He has “worshipped” there for 20 years; he named his last book after one of the Reverend’s sermons; etc. etc. A great case could be made that Obama himself must be a closet racist or how could he possibly have withstood the storm of hatred emanating from the pulpit.