What’s right is Wright and what’s wrong is wrong but Senator Barack Obama has a consistent problem in understanding this time-worn maxim. And his insistence on standing by his man, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., his pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side who just happens to be a bigot, is troubling, indeed. 

Reverend Wright has been the topic of much discussion amongst inquiring minds for lo these many months of this presidential campaign. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism.”

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," telling a Jewish group in Cleveland before the Ohio primary that everyone has someone like Wright in their family.

Rev. Wright married Senator Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Wright has a formal role in Obama’s campaign. He is a member of Obama's African-American Religious Leadership Committee, an honorary advisory group that in recent days has been used mostly to take care of people who say controversial things, according to ABC News Brian Ross.

We’ve been down this road with Sen. Obama before. The young Senator from Illinois seems to have surrounded himself with controversial figures and when speaking to these associations he appears to have mastered the art of the school of having it both ways.

When some people in his campaign step over the line, white folks in particular, they are quickly denounced and retired from his campaign.

A case in point, Obama’s troubled foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, who in an interview with a foreign newspaper called Obama’s rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, a “monster.” Ms. Power was gone immediately, no walking any line here, nor a room in the family attic.

Yet Obama has a way of dismissing others’ trespasses with a calm demeanor, an insincere apology, a clever retort, or whatever device he needs to put off the inquiring press... particularly when the controversial words are made by his associates who happen to be African-American.

Obama used his rhetorical aplomb recently when confronted about his association with the highly-bigoted Nation of Islam leader Reverend Louis Farrahkan who had endorsed the Illinois Senator.

When during a debate NBC’s Tim Russert asked Obama, “Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?” Obama might have said, “No.” But instead, he seemed to go out of his way to denounce some of Farrakhan’s statements while not taking on Farrakhan himself.

More than a few observers were taken aback by Obama’s not-so-deft sidestep.

Obama’s campaign has been fueled by the African-American vote. A recent Rasmussen poll has Obama garnering 81 percent of the black vote compared to Clinton’s 7 percent.

A large segment of the African-American community worships the very ground Rev. Farrakhan walks on. Rev. Wright is thought to be one of the ten most influential black pastors.

There has been much talk about the uncomfortable subjects of racism and gender bias in this campaign in which the first black man and the first woman are fighting to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. But the subject of race is front and center these days.

Former Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter, took a lickin' from the Obama camp this week for making comments after a paid speech to the Torrance Cultural Center in Torrance, California.

“If Obama was a white man," she asserted, "he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Her remarks touched off a torrent of criticisms.

Mrs. Clinton, saying she did not agree with the comments, called it “regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”

Mr. Obama called the remarks “divisive.”

Mrs. Ferraro resigned Wednesday from Senator Hillary  Clinton’s campaign finance committee but remained unapologetic.

Now tapes of Reverend Wright’s controversial sermons have surfaced though Sen. Obama in the past denied their content. When questioned about the tapes, Obama’s campaign insisted that Sen. Obama can attend Wright’s church and not agree with everything he says.

Wright?

Wrong!

It would be impossible to imagine a President of the United States attending a Church where the lead pastor stood on the pulpit and made such statements as blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America. 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."

Or this gem: “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called the ‘N’ word.”

Despite the controversy Rev. Wright remains on the committee even when it was only a day ago that the Obama Campaign so vehemently went after one of Hillary Clinton’s surrogates and accused the Clinton Campaign of “exhibiting a pattern of racial bigotry.”

But considering the remarks of Obama's spiritual mentor Rev. Wright, and Rev. Farrakhan’s, too, isn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?