The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Looking for the Rev. Wright

I am so ready to read the long magazine take-out story (Hanna?) about Obama and his church and its pastor: What Trinity United Church of Christ and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright mean to Chicago, what it means that Obama and his family joined this church and stayed there, etc. I feel like I'm missing the context that helps me make sense of the Kristol line Judith points to, and I don't really know how to fit Wright into my ever-developing picture of Obama. Agreed, everyone has their baggage. Also agreed that it's fair enough if Obama's membership in this church is in part a political calculation. I want to know the specifics behind this choice, though. I wonder, for example, if this church reflects the social world and family background of Michelle Obama as much or more than Barack's? Also, it seems to me that your relationship with the pastor who conducts your wedding ceremony and baptize your children says something different about you than your cozying-up political-pal relationships with whatever man of the cloth. Though, to be fair, I don't think Wright was making the statements Obama is calling "appalling and inflammatory" at the time of those Obama family milestones.

Melinda, you asked me last week if I felt more sympathetic to Spitzer because he's Jewish and so am I (and because I stated the obvious: He ain't gonna be the first Jewish president). Nope, I didn't feel more sympathetic, but I did cringe harder over his misdeeds. On that one, I felt like I did understand the context. I may well have been fooling myself, but the Spitzers feel to me recognizable—which made the whole thing all the more unsettlling.