Perfection.

Did you see/hear Barack's speech? Click the link to go to the text. It was perfection. I literally sat there with my mouth open. He said everything that needed to be said, to everyone who needed to hear it. I'll admit, I was slightly terrified that he'd pull the old "denounce and repudiate" Wright to make 'the American people' feel better. And early on in the speech, I was kinda iffy about the Constitution stuff. I was even a little worried when he started talking about Wright's political views (with which I agree to a certain degree). But then... Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And then... I can no more disown [Wright] 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. And then... (And this really knocked my socks off.) In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Of course, there was more. Read it yourself. Or better yet, find it somewhere and listen to it or watch it. Believe you, me, this speech is one of the best he's ever made, and one of the best I've ever heard. Forgive my effusiveness in this, but there's just no way it could have been better.