No candidate for the presidency wants to see these three headlines (from Memeorandum) on the same day:

Obama says Rezko played a bigger fundraising role

Obama’s Pastor’s Sermon: ‘God Damn America’

Michelle Obama’s hospital: On senator’s wish-list

On the bright side, Obama has finally figured out that he’s got a problem.

He went into serious damage-control mode tonight, appearing with Keith Olbermann (who was direct and skeptical and pulled no punches; he was also morose) on MSNBC, with Major Garrett (who was thoroughly professional, asking only factual questions) on Fox, and with Anderson Cooper (who was no-nonsense, and openly skeptical) on CNN. Those appearances came after he released a statement to HuffPo in the late afternoon.

But early in the day, Obama—probably unaware that videos of the fiery, racial animus-spouting Wright had gone viral on the internet and were being replayed over and over again on the cable channels—tried to tamp down the controversy by suggesting that Wright’s incendiary comments had been “cherry-picked.” TPM’s Greg Sargent reported at 11:47 a.m.:

In an interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper, Obama personally addresses the revelations that Obama’s pastor said “God damn America”:

Q: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s all over the wire today (from an ABC News story), a statement that your pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side) made in a sermon in 2003 that instead of singing “God Bless America,” black people should sing a song essentially saying “God Damn America.”A: I haven’t seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

Q: What about this particular statement?

A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it’s important to judge me on what I’ve said in the past and what I believe.

Forgive me if I’m not getting this, but most of the things I heard Wright say on some of those videos were “just wrong.” Are we supposed to believe that these three sermons are the only instances when he’s said stuff that was “just wrong”?

I know you’re not stupid, so I’m going to settle on the likeliest explanation, offered by a commenter at Contentions. He figures you knew you’d get a pass, even on such a controversial part of your exotic background, from the folks you know best:

Obama’s support may not dry up among Dems, for they are a forgiving bunch when their nominee-in-waiting is a post-racial leftist change dude –

The usual suspects are, of course, doing just about what you’d expect: blaming Hillary!

It’s a gross error in judgment, though, as that same commenter at Contentions notes:

— but the rest of America will turn away in revulsion.

Well yeah.

Dude: what were you thinking when you came up with that lame line about the “old uncle” you don’t disagree with?

On one of the Fox shows tonight, Ari Fleischer said (I’m paraphrasing) that the Republicans are looking forward to running against Obama, because as time goes on, he shows himself to be just a typical politician.

You don’t say!

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Thanks to Judith Viorst for inspiring the title of this post.

ABC reports on a new initiative by MoveOn that offers Obama-lovers an opportunity to become famous for 15 seconds:

MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Barack Obama for president, is encouraging citizens to develop 30-second pro-Obama television ads which will be judged by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and others.

The ad contest, which organizers are calling “Obama in 30 Seconds,” provides the opportunity for Obama supporters to creatively show what inspires them about the Senator’s candidacy. Contestants will be allowed to submit their ads between March 27th and April 1st.

That’s the part that appeals to contestants self-interest. Here’s the part that solidifies the interests of the sponsors [e.a.]:

“After eight years of President Bush campaigning on fear and war, people are feeling hopeful again. They’re eager to talk about what inspires them about our country — and Senator Obama leading it,” said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.

Yes indeed. All ambitious young people will soon be very eager to prove their loyalty to the Liberal Guilt party.

In case you’re wondering, contest winners will be announced at a most convenient moment:

The winning ad, and ad-maker, will be announced on April 17th–just before Pennsylvania’s April 22nd primary.

MoveOn will then spend an undisclosed amount of money to air the ad on “national television.”

Everyone wants to get in on the action in the new arena of Political Entertainment.

Peter Brown, writing at Real Clear Politics, fills in some details of an emerging picture:

Any realistic scenario in which Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination assumes that the party bosses will have both the will and the power to stop Sen. Barack Obama’s nomination.

But there is one good reason why they might not try, even if she is able to string together a series of primary and caucus victories: Call it liberal guilt, or call it fear of reprisal from the party’s powerful black base.

He also clarifies the sharp leftward turn of the Democrats:

The once moderate-conservative wing of the party has virtually disappeared, with millions following Ronald Reagan to the Republican Party or, these days, given the disillusionment with President Bush, calling themselves independents.

Today’s Democratic leaders are the reformers who seized control of the party decades ago — and their ideological children. … [I]f too young to have been part of the civil rights movement, [they] embrace it as one of the Democratic Party’s crowning achievements. They see enhancing the rights and opportunities of minority Americans as an integral part of their role in government, even though only Lyndon Johnson in 1964, among Democratic presidential candidates since Franklin Roosevelt, has carried the majority of white voters.

Being part of an effort to deny Obama, who has a white mother and an African father, the nomination makes them very uneasy, especially when to do so they will have to overrule the verdict of the primaries and caucuses.

Remember, these superdelegates are elected officials and members of the Democratic National Committee — people invested in their own political future and that of the Democratic Party.

The threat of a revolt among African-Americans, not to mention among young voters of all races, if Obama is denied the nomination by the superdelegates might be enough to discourage even those who see Clinton as the better general election candidate.

You don’t hear this kind of controversial analysis on television, and it goes much further than Geraldine Ferraro went.

Will Olbermann demand that Brown renounce his opinion, too?

Where will the demand for renunciation stop?