Roland S. Martin
AC360° Contributor
CNN Political Analyst

A New York magazine cover story last week reignited the debate over Rev. Jeremiah Wright when it stated – without attribution – that the former pastor of Sen. Barack Obama was releasing a new book.

But his daughter, Jeri, told me today that the story is absolutely false.

"The only book we're working on is the history of Trinity (United Church of Christ) and I haven't even started editing that," Wright told Essence.com.

After I reached out to her, she called her father, who is teaching and ministering in Ghana (I ran into him last month when I was in the West African nation) and said he "laughed" when she asked about the book.

"He said that he also got an email, but was unable to respond since he's in email hell," Wright said, meaning in a place in Ghana where it's difficult to send and receive email.

"I asked him if he was writing and he said, 'Nope. I'm not publishing anything. I'm not going on any book tours.'"

Rumors about a pre-election book by Wright have been surfacing for the last few months, and intensified since the New York article.

It even has caused a stir among Obama supporters, who were also chasing down the rumor to see if there was any legitimacy to it.

I even got calls from executives in the publishing world inquiring as to whether the story is true.

Jeri Wright says when her dad returns to another part of Ghana, he will issue a formal response to the New York article reiterating that what they reported is false.

Editor's Note: This was first posted on Essence.com.  You can also read more from Roland at RolandSMartin.com.

Rebecca Walker is urging women to turn the page on gender-based feminism.

Rebecca Walker
Founder, Third Wave Foundation

Let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief, shall we? Now that we've got our nominee, Hillary can get some rest, Obama can read his daughters a bedtime story, and the rest of us can relax knowing our relative peace won't be shattered by another primary-related explosion.

Goodbye Reverend Wright and Bosnia tarmac snipers. Goodbye bitter working-class voters and hard-working white people. See you in November John King and the magic CNN map.

But what now?

Obama has gracefully accepted the victory banner, and a lot of Hillary supporters, especially women, are walking off the field as if they've lost a war. I understand their frustration, but the truth is they didn't lose, not by a long shot...

Read the rest of the blog...

Brian Fitzpatrick
Senior Editor, Culture and Media Institute

By leaving his church, has Barack Obama put the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy behind him?

Not a chance.

The public still has serious questions about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, even though the media are trying to help him wriggle off the hook.

Sunday’s New York Times sounded almost desperate to see Obama freed from Wright: “Now that Mr. Obama has addressed his ties to the church and pastor in a long speech and fully broken with both, it is not clear what else he can say or do to ameliorate the continued concerns of some voters about those associations.”

The Times may not see it, but in fact it’s clear as day what Obama needs to do. He needs to answer, credibly, the important questions about his values and character that the Wright fiasco has raised.

Read the rest of his blog...

Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday denounced comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman

Who is Barack Obama? What does he really believe?

These are the unanswered questions about a man who could be the 44th president.

That is why there is such a curiosity about him and why the public and media is looking closely at his wife, and his minister and, before this is over, every other element of his life.

Here is what we do know. He is extremely articulate and extremely ambitious. You can throw bright into the mix, too. But what he really is, is inexperienced. No one in recent times has jumped to the front of the Presidential express quicker or with a thinner resume.

He served a few years in the part-time Illinois state Senate and worked part-time as a junior associate lawyer drafting wills and real estate documents.

Prior to law school, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, whatever that means. He ran voter registration drives and through knowledge he learned from that experience, he got elected in 1996 to a State Senate seat.

Conveniently, Obama ran virtually unopposed after he legally challenged the qualifying petitions of the incumbent and his other three primary opponents and got them thrown off the ballot. Winning the Democrat primary meant victory because Republicans offered only token opposition in the most overwhelming Democrat district in the state.

Before he had served out his term, Obama ran for Congress and got crushed by incumbent Bobby Rush in a primary. He also chose not to vote on many controversial measures in the legislature.

When a vacant U.S. Senate seat opened up 2004, he was off to the races. And when a series of soap opera events hit his primary and general election opponents, he faced a token opponent, perennial right-wing kook presidential candidate Allan Keyes, who lived in Maryland and had been destroyed when he ran for the Senate in that state. Add lucky to the other qualities listed above.

Because of his speaking skills, Sen. John Kerry picked Obama (still a state senator) to keynote the 2004 convention. He was sworn in as newly elected senator in January 2005, and in February 2007, after just two years in the Senate, he announces for President.

All we know about his Senate career was that Obama was the most liberal voting member of the Senate in those first two years, according to the National Journal, and was anti-war, anti-gun and pro-immigration.

That is why influences in his life, the thoughts and beliefs of his wife, and the rantings of his pastor and mentor all matter: because it might help us know more about the man from Illinois, Indonesia, Hawaii, California and New York.

Obama has run up until now a brilliant campaign and excited millions of voters by talking about change. Now the rest of us want to know, "Who is this guy?"

And, to steal a line from Walter Mondale that he used in the '84 campaign against Gary Hart: Where's the beef?

Martin E. Marty
University of Chicago divinity professor, columnist, editor
Editor's Note: Marty issued the following statement this evening.

To all those who have inquired, responded, or asked for comment or interviews:

I am “on the road” this week and regrettably cannot respond personally to the numerous e-mails I have received regarding Pastor Jeremiah Wright.

Earlier this month The Chronicle (of Higher Education) Review  and a local TV program asked me to appraise Wright’s role and achievement as pastor of Trinity Church. I attempted to put his pastoral and “preacherly” work into congregational perspective. The article was widely circulated and remains available on the web.

In the past week, however, what in the article I called Pastor Wright’s “abrasive—to say the least!-edges” have completely dominated his public comments. In them he aggressively defended the very items that I had called “abhorrent and indefensible” as well as “distracting and harmful.”

In the new circumstances, I will have nothing more to add, since the new context is entirely political and not churchly. Those who read me in my five weekly or biweekly outlets know that I make it a practice in them not to mention candidates and candidacies for public office, as an interpretation of my vocation in “civic pedagogy,” not partisan expression.

LINK TO CHRONICLE REVIEW ARTICLE

LINK TO MARTY E. MARTY'S BIO

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are statistically tied in Gallup's national tracking poll.

Faye Wattleton
President, Center for the Advancement of Women

Presidential politics is a rough game, intensified by the instantaneousness of the information age. Not for the faint-hearted. Thus, it’s hard to understand why Sen. Barack Obama didn’t unequivocally disavow Rev. Jeremiah Wright a month ago,leaving ambiguous the lines along which this minister influenced his perspective on race in America.

Mr. Obama had the perfect opportunity to make a clean break with the incendiary “black liberation” theologian, when he gave his widely-televised speech at Constitution Hall on the state of race relations. Instead, he chose to explain him and even grant him kinship as a cantankerous “uncle.”

Mr. Obama finally renounced his pastor, after the commotion triggered by Rev. Wright’s bizarre and stereotype-reinforcing minstrel performance. Sen. Obama’s belated outrage will likely generate public skepticism and add credence to the reverend’s characterization that he says, “what he has to say as a politician.”

Perplexingly, Mr. Obama missed another opportunity. While he emphatically declared that Rev. Wright’s messages are “antithetical to our campaign,” Americans are still awaiting to know what his presidency will be about on the issues of our daily lives, if he wins the nomination.

Sens. Obama and Clinton have failed to harness the distractions of their surrogates, allowing them to fill in the gaps on sensitive social issues they're not addressing.

In Ms. Clinton’s case - most prominently, strategist Mark Penn and her husband. Instead of a constructive, beyond-the-slogans debate about race, gender and class and how their presidencies will to lead to greater unity - which Americans want to hear - valuable campaign time is given to damage control, undermining their credibility and stoking the fires of cynicism about all politicians. 
 
All Americans and the future direction of our nation are shortchanged. Especially shortchanged are the issues about which women want answers –  pay equality, domestic violence, affordable healthcare, educational opportunities, reproductive rights - not on their websites, but spoken as plainly and directly as they do when they defend threats to their political ambitions.

Editor's note: Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes interfaith cooperation. He adapted this from his On Faith blog posted by The Washington Post:

Ebo Patel
Author, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.

I discovered in the African American tradition – the poetry of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, the novels of Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, the scholarship of Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, the sermons of Martin Luther King and, yes, Jeremiah Wright - a way of being that gave an honored place to my heritage as an Indian and a Muslim, and an invitation to bring those parts of me to the American project, which is fundamentally about people from the four corners of the earth building a nation together.

When I first moved back to Chicago in late 2001 to start the Interfaith Youth Core, it seemed like I heard Jeremiah Wright’s name mentioned every place I turned. All kinds of people –rich folk and poor folk, traditionalists and progressives, young people and old people, black and white, believers and atheists – told me I had to go see him preach.

Nobody said anything about radical politics or hating America or stirring up a race war. The one word I heard used in reference to Jeremiah Wright over and over again was the word that University of Chicago divinity professor Martin Marty used to describe his ministry: “Hope”.

Here is what I remember most about that morning: At the end of the service, Reverend Wright read aloud a letter that a young woman had sent him. She had grown up in the congregation, was now studying for a PhD in oceanography, and was writing to thank Reverend Wright and Trinity for all they had done to support her.

This is what we’re about, Jeremiah Wright said, waving the letter from the pulpit, proud enough to be her own father. The congregation cheered wildly.

At this point, everyone has an image of Jeremiah Wright. But that moment made a lasting impression.

Read Ebo Patel's entire blog here

Hey Bloggers,

Just wanted to let you guys know about our program tonight:

AC360° will have the first primetime sit-down interview with Michelle Obama, wife of Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

We’ll talk about how the re-ignited Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy is affecting the family, her husband's campaign, and everything in between….

Join us tonight at 10p ET for the 360° interview

Roland S. Martin, CNN Contributor
360° Contributor and Radio Host

"Why don't Rev. Jeremiah Wright just sit down and be quiet? Don't he know he's hurting Sen. Barack Obama?"

If I had a nickle for every time someone has asked, emailed or texted me that in the last three days, I could retire.

And trust me, I get it.

Wright has had a negative impact on Obama's presidential aspirations because of the constant playing of snippets of his sermons. And many believe that his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS; his speech at the Detroit NAACP; and the appearance at the National Press Club on Monday morning is all about him.

Yes, that is all true.

But what would you do? If your 36 years in ministry was degraded, would you go and hide?

If right wing radio and TV hacks like Sean Hannity, Lars Larson and others called you a bigot and anti-Semitic, and others who don't even realize that you served in the Marines and the Navy for six years castigated you daily as being un-American, would you defend yourself?

Of course you would!

But there is a fine line that you must walk. And depending on how you do could determine how you are viewed and whether the presidential aspirations of Obama are severely damaged.

HOW HE WON

The interview with Moyers, along with the Detroit NAACP speech, were perfect opportunities for Wright.

He came across as thoughtful, smart, theologically sound, and more importantly – human – than he has in the last month. He has been unfairly portrayed as a raging lunatic, courtesy of the YouTube clips, and that's not him.

It's so much easier in a one-one-one setting to have your views heard.

Even his speech on Sunday was pretty good.

At moments funny and hilarious, Wright shone a light on our differences, and how we need to overcome them.

There is nothing wrong with having different music and worship styles. Its when we try to impose one as being superior or favored over the other. That was an excellent point he made.

I got a lot of emails from folks who said they saw him differently based on this, and that's always a good thing.

Even the morning's papers spoke to his message of change. He got great reviews from a variety of sources.

HOW HE LOST

I never thought appearing before the National Press Club was a good idea. I even told my radio audience a week ago that he should cancel.

One, it's not his element, and with there being questions, you never know which direction they are coming from.

Wright's opening statement was a good one, but it went all downhill from there.

The issue wasn't always just his answers. It was also HOW he answered them. He was too flippant, comfortable, cocky and arrogant in some of his answers. Where he should have expounded, he allowed a quip to simply end a statement. Where he should have been thoughtful, his histrionics and facial expressions led the way.

I'm sure someone will say that style over substance is silly. I concur. But Wright's style was a part of the substance, and he let it get in the way.

The one danger in being a smart ass person is that you come across as a smart ass. Wright was that way Monday.

Finally, he stepped on his own story! The headlines showed that his Sunday speech was well-received. Why let that moment not settle and folks get to savor it?

Now we're left with a different taste in our mouth.

Folks, perceptions matter. How people think of you, regardless of what you say, does matter.

Wright had a moment to rise above the "playing the dozens" statements and the "when they talk about your mama" rants. He could have presented himself as the learned man that he is. But he allowed the silly stuff to cloud his message.

Either his media handlers were incompetent, or he ignored them. That, folks, is a recipe for disaster.

As for Obama? Wright even more dismissed him as a politician, and that's not good. He did his member no favor with his actions, and Obama is going to have to bear down even more so to move beyond Wright.

If you disagree, fine. But Wright had an opportunity to elevate the conversation. His speech Sunday was damn good. But 12 hours later, that was dismissed, and he walked into the lion's den, thought he could tame it, and got mauled.

And with his member slamming him and forcibly pushing him off the front page, Wright has no one else to blame but himself.

Tim Wise
Friend of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Author of 'White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son'
www.timwise.org

Much has been said about the role that racism may play in the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election.

But what has been largely ignored is the way that media pundits, by virtue of the language they use, the questions they ask, and the way they frame issues, often reinforce racial division, and make it harder for us to examine race issues honestly.

So consider the way the media has been pushing the question, "Can Obama win working class voters?" Or, "Why is Obama having trouble connecting with working class voters?" Both questions ignore that Obama doesn't have a working class problem—large percentages of the black folks who are turning out to support him at rates of 90% are indeed working class—but rather, a white working class problem.

By implicitly equating "working class" with white, the media reinforces the notion of "hard-working," average (i.e. normal) folks as white. This then leaves blacks to be viewed either as the decidedly non-working and dreaded "underclass," or the elitist types that Hillary Clinton wants people to envision when they think of Senator Obama. Either of these images can reinforce racism, either by stoking white fear of the former or resentment toward the latter.

Or consider the way the media has responded to the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
Although much attention has been paid to black anger in the wake of Rev. Wright's largely-taken-out-of-context comments, and although some have tried to explain the place of such righteous indignation within the black church and community, the framing of the issue has reinforced the white perspective as normal, and thus, valid. So we are asked to wonder, "Why are some black people so angry?" rather than, "Why are some white people so complacent?" about racial injustice.

White complacency is seen as normal, while black anger is taken as the pathology to be understood, ultimately making them the problem. Their perspectives are the ones that are strange and in need of explanation, but ours (if we're white) are perfectly fine and need not be explained or defended to anyone. Such a normalizing of the white perspective only makes it more likely that whites will be hostile to those who think and view the world differently.

Of course, it's not only this election where the media has normalized whiteness, or made it altogether invisible, so that its consequences can't even be seen, let alone understood.

Consider the 2004 Presidential race, after which most every talking head noted that President Bush had won the "evangelical vote," and claimed that the nation was divided between "blue states" and "red states."

In the first instance, commentators failed to notice that the President most certainly did not win the black evangelical vote, but only the white evangelical vote. Black evangelicals voted against him by at least four to one. Saying that "evangelicals" supported the President, as the media did, marginalized Christians of color, whose sense of religious duty compelled them to vote differently from their white brothers and sisters. Why? Who knows? No one thought to ask.

As for blue states and red states, the notion of a geographic divide in this country is largely mythical. Most whites in the blue states—including New York, California, Illinois, Michigan and Maryland—either voted for Bush, or split 50-50 between Bush and Kerry. Meanwhile, in the red states, people of color voted overwhelmingly against the President. In other words, the real divide was racial, not regional.

By ignoring this truth, the media ducked the hard questions about why whites and folks of color often view our country so differently, and come to such different conclusions about what would be best for the nation politically.

But it is this kind of question we need to confront in order to have a truly productive conversation about race in America. That our respective racial identities often shape the way we view our national past, present and desired future—and therefore, often cause tension because we can't fathom where "the other guy" is coming from—is the truth that won't go away.

Only if media helps to uncover that reality, and encourage a real discussion about what it means, for all of us, will we likely make progress on the road to racial equity.

Jeremiah Wright speaks at an NAACP dinner on Sunday night.

Ed Rollins
Fmr. Huckabee Nat'l Campaign Chairman

In any election, it is difficult for an unknown and undefined candidate. The first rule of any political campaign is always go out and define yourself before your opponent does it for you.

Even though the 2008 race for the Democratic nomination has been long and expensive, the front runner Senator Obama is still unknown by most voters.

He said he was going to be a different kind of leader, a healer. One who brought people together, not divide them up by groups or special interests. And many voters thought and hoped that was going to be true.

Unfortunately, on his way to the nomination, it's not his opponent Hillary Clinton who is defining him, it's his own friend and former spiritual leader, whose language and rhetoric has been hateful and unpatriotic.

The candidate brushed him aside and tried to move on after the first damage, but Rev. Wright likes the big audience and obviously likes the media attention and maybe even the controversy. He is defining Obama in a way that can only lead to devastating results.

If this race becomes one about the repression of Black America and/or the United States' perceived sins against other nations, according to the gospel of Rev Wright, then the junior senator from Illinois becomes an easy target.

Comments like this one from the Rev. Wright:
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands (killed on 9/11) in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

And Rev. Wright's likening the Romans at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion to our brave US Marines and suggesting that the United States was acting like Al Qaeda under a different color flag. This is not a concept that Barack can defend, and now he needs to get himself as far away from the good reverend as possible.

Who is the real Obama? That's the first question I would raise if I were running a campaign against him. If the answer scares white voters or disturbs patriotic Americans, his march to victory is long and improbable.

Editor’s note: WE ARE UP FOR A WEBBY AWARD THANKS TO YOU!- SO VOTE FOR US HERE!

Barclay Palmer
360° Senior Producer

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke again today, this time at the National Press Club. He said recent criticism of him has really been an attack on the black church. He didn’t specify which.

Wright said the theology of the black church is a “theology of liberation; it is a theology of transformation and it is ultimately a theology of reconciliation.”

Despite its long history, he said the black religious tradition is in ways, “invisible to the dominant culture.”

“Being different does not mean one is deficient. It simply means one is different, like snowflakes,” Wright said, echoing comments he made last night to nearly 10,000 at an NAACP dinner in Detroit. Reconciliation means “we embrace our individual, rich histories.”

Thoughtful comments, certainly, despite the flurry over his relationship with Barack Obama.

But they do raise a question or three.

Why, after months of remaining silent, is Rev. Wright speaking like this now, just as Senator Obama has been trying to put the issue of his relationship with Rev. Wright behind him?

What are Rev. Wright’s feelings about Obama and his campaign for the presidency if he’s speaking this way at this moment, while Obama struggles to reach working class voters in upcoming primary states and, by the way, to maintain the appearance of inevitability he had wrested from Hillary Clinton? Remember that Obama recently, gently, distanced himself from Wright.

And, perhaps more important, where will this go?

Will Wright continue to distract Obama’s campaign, even as the reverend raises important issues? Will he inspire Americans to think through his ideas?

Or will his ideas, Obama’s, Clinton’s and John McCain’s all be obscured by the theater of controversy?

Roland S. Martin
360° Contributor
www.rolandsmartin.com

DETROIT – The Detroit NAACP has already set a world record for having the largest sit-down annual dinner in the world – I believe it was 10,000 – and this year is no different.

According to the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the chapter, more than 8,000 people have bought tickets this year, and suffice to say that the room is packed.

To put it in perspective there are six head tables assigned by color – yellow, black and white, green, red and the blue, which is considered the main table.

The stars are also out in full force, including: Hill Harper; Anthony Anderson; Vivica A. Fox; Morris Chestnut; Judge Greg Mathis; Michigan Gov. Jenniger Granholm; Michigan U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin; Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

I'm typing on my BlackBerry, but the photo I'll send soon will show you the expansive room.

The room is hot because the guest speaker is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It has been a busy day for him; earlier he preached two worship services at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, pastored by the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III.

Well, I'm sitting one seat over from where he'll be speaking so you'll get a taste of what he had to say. I also have my Flip Video camera so we hope to have video as well!

Editor's note: Read other blogs from the 360° team of contributors at cnn.com/360