Thanks a Bunch, Rev.

Can't blame this one on Hillary, unless Reverend Wright is in her employ, but you'd have to think Nixon killed Kennedy to believe that. Hmmm...

Whatever his motives, the Good Doctor has just about succeeded in playing Ralph Nader in the new blockbuster "Let's Ruin a Candidate," starring presidential candidate Barack Obama as Al Gore.

All these months of Obama trying to keep race off the front page, and now he's powerless before its presence. Reverend Wright says he's insisting on blaring his I've-been-so-wronged message before the American people, not because his feelings have been hurt, but because these criticisms symbolize an "all-out attack against the black church in America."

If he believes this, he's delusional. Let's be honest: by "attack," he can only mean by white people. Trust us, if Chinese newspapers were lobbing critiques at him, he'd ignore them.

So it's white people. Can it be possible that Reverend Wright believes white America has anything but the slightest idea that the black church even exists? That the black church represents some kind of danger to the white establishment? That Joe Six-Pack or Kevin Cabernet think about black issues at all, let alone how the South side of Chicago worships on Sunday? If the Good Rev does think that, he ought to look over at the huge, incredulous smile on Karl Rove's face.

White America knows, vaguely, that there's another neighborhood down there, on the other side of town, where people of other colors live, and that a lot of their men seem to be in prison, and that the people who live there worship at churches where the music is a whole lot better than at the white people's own churches. That's what they know. Most white people have grown up loving Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke and Whitney Houston but don't even realize these heroes came out of that tradition.

Have they stopped gassing up their SUVs long enough to say to themselves: These black pastors are dangerous! They're subversives! We need to stop them!...can Reverend Wright or anyone else really believe that?

No. Poor Reverend Wright's ego has been slapped. He is responding like a five year old in a sandbox, caring not one whit about the other man in the box, the one who has been trying so desperately to get beyond this hurtful line of dialog, and who could have easily thrown his ex-pastor under the bus, but refused to.

When Wright is done spewing, he'll limp back to Chicago and his message will have truly been received. That message is: "You may have liked Barack Obama before, but he scares hell out of you now, right? One more backwards leap for America's racial divide! Do I hear an A-men?"

Not from The Great Plotnik, you don't, who thought you'd been wronged before, who knows the good you've done in your community, who understands that your words were taken out of context. But we're looking at you right now on Larry King, Rev. Nobody can take your face on national TV out of context. You wanted racial politics back on the front page and you got your wish. Feeling better?