This story’s finished absent Hillary’s oppo research team handing some lucky reporter video of Obama nodding along in church to one of Rev. Jeremiah’s greatest hits, so enjoy the last few hours of it while you can. Ace is after me to link the video of Wright expounding on 9/11, as it really does need to be seen to be believed. Here you go. I don’t know what the big deal is; who among us hasn’t heard a close personal friend of 20 years’ standing wax rapturous about jetliners plowing into the World Trade Center? I was with a grade-school chum at Taco Bell just the other day when he looked up from his gordita and pronounced upon “the chickens … coming home … to roost.” Lighten up and have a burrito, okay?

Byron York’s another guy who needs to lighten up. So Obama’s supporters seem to think the good reverend was right on target. So what? They’re just fighting racism or something:

I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, “God damn America,” called the United States the “U.S. of KKK A,” and said that 9/11 was “America’s chickens… coming home to roost.” “As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn’t surprised,” Davis told me. “I wasn’t offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct…. The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that’s how it’s said.”

Vernon Price, a ward leader in Philadelphia’s 22nd Precinct, told me Obama’s speech was “very courageous.” When I asked his reaction to Rev. Wright, Price said, “A lot of things that he said were true, whether people want to accept it, or believe it, or not. People believe in their hearts that a lot of what he said was true.”

And finally, Geraghty goes to the place where critics must not go. Fortunately, the family missed every seriously controversial thing Wright ever said from the pulpit over the past 20 years (albeit not every unseriously controversial thing) so the joke’s on you, Jim. Exit question via Patrick Ishmael: What was with that star-spangled display behind His Holiness at the podium today? I thought he transcended the petty trappings of superficial patriotism last year, preferring instead the deeper, inner patriotism of the conscientious liberal much as one might eschew the wingnutty vocal condemnation of a degenerate who thinks we deserved 9/11 in favor of the more profound condemnation that comes with sitting silent and smiling politely.

Update: Reap the whirlwind, you fraud.

[S]ixty-five percent said it didn’t make a difference in their view of Obama. However, of those whose opinion is changed, the net impact is very negative. Thirty percent said it made them have a less favorable view, whereas 2 percent said it made their view more favorable…

Democrats are especially apt to say their views are unchanged, with 76 percent saying it has made no difference of their view of Obama, 15 percent saying it made their view less favorable and 2 percent saying it made their view more favorable.

Republicans are the most likely to say their view has been affected: 47 percent say they’ve become less favorable, and 53 percent said it did not make a different.

Sixty-one percent of independent voters say they are unaffected, but 36 percent said it made their view less favorable. Two percent of independents said it made them more favorable view.

Update: Hail he of the immaculate standards for associating with racists!

In an interview with ABC News Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., called for the firing of talk radio host Don Imus. Obama said he would never again appear on Imus’ show, which is broadcast on CBS Radio and MSNBC television.

“I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus,” Obama told ABC News, “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.”

But that wasn’t quite true, was it? It’s almost as though he’s an abject hypocrite who’s making up his “principled” positions on race as he goes along to maximize his electoral advantage, isn’t it?