In his several explanations and denunciations of his longtime pastor, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama asks us to believe that he never heard any of the sermons in which Rev. Jeremiah Wright denounced and asked God to damn America. Neither was he present, he says, for Rev. Wright’s message in which he said America got what it deserved on 9/11 because we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II and have bombed other countries. He apparently also missed the one about how America created AIDS. The implication appears to have been that it was a plot to wipe out blacks, since the disease disproportionately affects African Americans.

Other church members must have told Obama what Rev. Wright said, or he could have viewed the sermon on the church’s Website. It appears many others besides just Rev. Wright share this point of view. If one looks at the video, church members are standing, shouting approval and applauding. This is not one man speaking for himself. From the reaction, one can fairly conclude he is speaking for most, if not all, of the congregation. But not for Barack Obama, he says.