WHAT DID OBAMA KNOW ABOUT WRIGHT AND WHEN

[RealClearPolitics]

Barack Obama has twice addressed the nation on his 20 year very close friend, advisor, and former pastor.

In March the candidate said in a major address necessitated by the firestorm set off by video tape experts of Wright’s sermons being played 24-7 on the cable networks:

“I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.”

Yesterday, as we all know, Obama finally disowned Wright. Not because of his controversial views (apparently)—which even Obama admits were all known by the candidate before his March “race speech”—but because Wright crossed the “enough is enough” line by suggesting Monday in a speech at the National Press Club that Obama never distanced himself from Wright’s views, and that the candidate said what he said in March only out of political expediency:

"What particularly angered me was his suggestion that my previous denunciation was somehow political posturing," Obama said, calling it "a show of disrespect for me."

Yet, after two national speeches on the subject in just over a month one overarching question remains: What did Obama know about Wright’s views on 9/11, Zionism, American foreign policy, and Aids that he did not know a year ago, seven years ago, or even 20 years ago?

Much has been made of Obama’s “uninviting” Wright to the announcement last year of Obama’s presidential candidacy as proof that Obama must have known about Wright's views by then.

But logic teaches that given the closeness of the prior relationship, Obama must have known for years what Wright's views were.

Setting aside the question why Obama—a man of god—was not in church the Sunday after the 9/11 attacks in order to hear Wright’s sermon blaming the attacks on America, how is it that Obama never discussed with an man with whom he was as close as an “uncle” philosophy, politics, and American foreign policy? Particularly since both men share a mutual interest in those subjects?

Until the question of precisely what Obama knew about Wright’s extreme, anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-white views and when did he know it is answered, then questions about Obama’s judgment and character will linger.

Simply continuing to deny that he was in church for the more controversial sermons, or stating (as he did yesterday) that Wright is not “the man I met 20 years ago” is not enough.