The XX Factor: What women really think.

Obama Waves the Flag

Do three saps make a trend? What I like best about Obama is that he does not play dumb and keep moving, or shout, Hey, look over there! So that instead of either rushing by this outcry over his preacher's remarks, or attempting to minimize what's happened, he's taken the far harder tack of doing just the opposite, of slowing down and broadening the focus of what Wright's frustration and the public's reaction to it are all about. It would have been so easy for him to get out there and tell us the 34 ways in which Wright is contemptible—but instead, he's actually tried to put the man in context. (Wright's been compared to Hitler on Fox and you think this is without risk?) And I'm asking seriously: When was the last time a politician, any politician, paid us the compliment of asking us to take a deep breath and get beyond our first reaction? Which is why I think he's not only been able to address the immediate campaign concern, but has managed to turn this into a chance for us to learn something. Don't we need someone in public life who can look at a problem and say, No, I reject that premise; let's go at this a different way. He has that capability, and the whole notion that his only real gift is a way with pretty words drives me mad: Lovely words are the product of clear thought. Always.

I heard Obama's speech today as an announcement that we should call off the purity tests, all of them, because we are all flawed, sure, but are also more than the sum of our three worst YouTube moments. We don't have the luxury of continuing to play this gotcha game, because we can every one of us be got—and why would we spend our time that way, when there is so much work to be done?

"As imperfect as he may be,'' Obama said today, Wright "has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.  He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.  I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me.  And they are a part of America, this country that I love.''

Isn't there a little Jeremiah Wright—and a little Toot, as he calls his Kansas-born grandma—in all of us? But what I heard him say today is that that's just the starting point.