From Obama’s speech today:

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman 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.

This analogy between Reverend Wright and Obama’s grandmother doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because Wright isn’t just some close friend or family member of Obama’s, he’s a reverend and the leader of a church Obama has belonged to by choice for twenty years. Excusing his racist rhetoric by comparing it to offhand comments uttered by Obama’s grandmother is completely facetious.

As the leader of a congregation who looks up to him, Rev. Wright has a greater responsibility. His speech is far more likely to influence people than that of Obama’s white grandmother who has no congregation hanging on her words. Leaders can and should be held to a higher standard, knowing as they do that their positions make their words carry that much more weight. A crazy homeless man ranting on the corner about the government creating AIDS can do no harm, for he has no authority, unlike the authority a reverend like Wright has.

I don’t think this speech will end the issues raised by Wright’s sermons, though the media will try their best to make that the case.