Former congresswoman/vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has been vilified by her fellow Democrats for saying:  "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman 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."

Even if Ferraro was merely pointing out the candidate of color's lack of experience and even if it is universally known that his current opponent brings a solid year or two more senate experience plus First Lady time second only to Eleanor Roosevelt, how dare she play the race card?

On the other side, another person who dares to play the race card is Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. He has been Barak Obama's personal pastor and family spiritual advisor for the last 20 years. 

Granted, the bullet-pointed phrases below that were uttered voce forte from the pulpit of Rev. Wright are also taken "way out of context".  So please, for the sake of fairness, use your imagination compassionately and construct the most forgiving scenario for their in-church usage that you possibly can.

• G** damn America

• Hillary ain't no n*gger

• Bill [Clinton] treated [us] like Monica

• Racism is how this country was founded

• We’re the same as Al-Qaeda

• G**’s sick of this s**t!

While speaking to a primarily Jewish audience earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial.  Rev. Wright is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," suggesting that many of us have people like that in our own families and, more importantly, that he knows full well about the reverend's controversial utterances.

More recently, once the edited clips of Rev. Wright's most controversial sermons became part of every TV newscast, the senator half-distanced himself from the pastor who married the Obamas and baptized their children.

"I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally, either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew.  He always preached the social gospel and was sometimes controversial in the same way that many people who'd speak out on social issues are controversial.  But these particular statements that had been gathered are ones that I strongly objected to and strongly condemned.  Had I heard them in church, I would have expressed that concern directly to Reverend Wright. I [wasn't] familiar with these until recently," Obama said last week.

But today, after considerable thought, counsel and speechwriting, it seems as though Sen. Obama has decided not to put that much distance between himself and Rev. Wright after all.

"...the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races..." Obama said during today's well-publicized speech in Philadelphia, symbolically near the site where the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

While the latest Obama oratory may not convince a sufficient number of voters of what he knew and when he knew it as relates to Rev. Wright's racially incendiary remarks, it does lend credence to Geraldine Ferraro's opinion, voiced during an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" after she was forced to resign from her fundraiser "job" with the Clinton Campaign over her observations about Sen. Obama's race and gender.

"My comments have been taken so out of context and have been spun by the Obama campaign as racist that it's doing precisely what they don't want done -- going to the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."

It will be very interesting to see if Mrs. Ferraro retains her candor once the real campaign begins and the rhetoric continues "dividing us even more".

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