Asked if he agreed with campaign manager David Plouffe's stinging rebuke of Team Clinton, Obama replied, "I think that at this stage in the campaign there are going to be dust-ups particularly at the staff level."

"Certainly, I don't think that that photograph was circulated to enhance my candidacy. I think that's fair to say," Obama said. "Do I think that it is reflective of Sen. Clinton's approach to the campaign? Probably not."

"And, so, you know, at this point, you know, my interest is just moving forward and talking about the issues that are going to be helpful to the people of Ohio," he concluded.

Such rhetoric was not likely to win friends among white people, so consequently Cone became the target of a barrage of white criticism. What his critics failed to do was to read Cone's book from cover to cover, for in the final paragraph of his book he explains: "Being black in America has very little to do with skin color. To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are. … Being reconciled to God does not mean that one's skin is physically black. It essentially depends on the color of your heart, soul, and mind." For Cone, then, blackness is a symbol for the oppressed and whiteness is a symbol for the oppressor.

In his subsequent writings Cone consistently maintained the use of these symbols. In his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), Cone's rhetoric sounds strident if one fails to understand his use of the terms black and white. For example: "To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores." Or again, "Black theology will accept only a love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." In looking back on these earlier books, Cone later admitted that he would no longer use such extreme language, but, nevertheless, his condemnation of racism and oppression was as strong as ever.

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As early as 1977 he had come to see that Christian theology must develop a world-embracing vision that extends far beyond the immediate concerns of Black America and the particularities of the Christian faith. He wrote in Cross Currents in 1977: "I think that the time has come for black theologians and church people to move beyond a mere reaction to white racism in America and begin to extend our vision of a new socially constructed humanity in the whole inhabited world. … For humanity is whole, and cannot be isolated into racial and national groups." Cone readily admitted that in his earlier years as a theologian he failed to appreciate that he was guilty of male chauvinism and sexist language, especially with respect to Black women. In the introduction to the revised edition of Black Theology and Black Power he wondered aloud, "With black women playing such a dominant role in the African-American liberation struggle, past and present, how could I have been so blind?"

I predict Obama has bequeathed to us a new lexicon, a novel way to explain away racist outbursts.

Obama has sanctified the doctrines of moral equivalence (the private racial slight is balanced by the televised public hatred; everyone has a pastor in some ways like Wright, etc.) and contextualization (you must understand Wright's context and background; the good that he does; the protocols of the black church, etc.). The result is a lowering of the bar for the next racial outburst, since the perpetrator will immediately resort to the Obama defenses. And since we now know that Obama heard some of these "controversial" Wright sermons and did not object, we can see that his earlier, once just condemnation of someone like Imus — like many of his initial defenses of Wright—may now be inoperative:

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus. But I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude. ... He didn't just cross the line. He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women — who I hope will be athletes — that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It's one that I'm not interested in supporting." (October 2007)

The new sophistic Obama, however, would recount to us all the charity work and good that Imus had once done and still does, that we don't understand the joshing of the shock-jock radio genre that winks and nods at controversy in theatrical ways, that Imus was a legend and pioneer among talk show hosts, that Obama's own black relatives have on occasions expressed prejudicial statements about whites similar to what Imus does, that we all have our favorite talk shows, whose hosts occasionally cross the line, and that he can't quite remember whether he'd ever been on the Imus show, or whether he ever had heard Imus say anything that was insensitive — and therefore he could not and would not disown a Don Imus.

This is the real message of the Obama racial transcendence candidacy.

Obama First White House Contender to Call for Imus' Firing Over Racial Slur

Obama gave a nice speech, except for everything he said about race. He apparently believes we're not talking enough about race. This is like hearing Britney Spears say we're not talking enough about pop-tarts with substance-abuse problems.

By now, the country has spent more time talking about race than John Kerry has talked about Vietnam, John McCain has talked about being a POW, John Edwards has talked about his dead son and Al Franken has talked about his USO tours.

But the "post-racial candidate" thinks we need to talk yet more about race. How much more? I had had my fill by around 1974. How long must we all marinate in the angry resentment of black people?

As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said – not about black people, but literally, the exact same things – I think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and Wright referred to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming "home to roost.")

Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God."

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice."

Imagine a white pastor saying: "No, no, no, God damn America – that's in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!"

We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.

Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up." He said that a "lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families."

That may accurately describe the libretto of "Porgy and Bess," but it has no connection to reality. By Rev. Wright's own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was announced, ending "separate but equal" schooling.

Meanwhile, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in 1978 – and obviously long before that, or there wouldn't have been a case or controversy for the court to consider – it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race.

Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education, in hiring and in Academy Award nominations.

So for half of Rev. Wright's 66 years, discrimination against blacks was legal – though he never experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country where he did not live. For the second half of Wright's life, discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.

Discrimination has become so openly accepted that – in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist – Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist "old uncle," Rev. Wright.

First of all, Wright is not Obama's uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don't choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can't be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives.

But Wright is not a relative of Obama's at all. Yet, Obama cravenly compared Wright's racist invective to his actual grandmother, who "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama's grandmother – who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school – has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his "old uncle" – who is not his uncle – Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama's grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn't get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she's white. Denounce the racist!

Fine. Can we move on now?

No, of course, not. It never ends. To be fair, Obama hinted that we might have one way out: If we elect him president, then maybe, just maybe, we can stop talking about race.

I don't care how honest a candidate is, I've never seen one go back and denounce attack statements from within their campaign if the media doesn't call them on it first.