Asked yesterday how he felt about being "uninvited" to give the public invocation at Barack Obama's announcement for president back on February 10 of 2007, Reverend Wright responded:

Oh, I was not invited because that was a political event. Let me say again: I'm his pastor. As a political event, who started it off? Senator Dick Durbin. I started it off downstairs with him, his wife, and children in prayer. That's what pastors do.

So I started it off in prayer. When he went out into the public, that wasn't about prayer. That wasn't about pastor-member. Pastor- member took place downstairs. What took place upstairs was political.

To the contrary, we know, thanks to an interview Wright gave to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times in March 2007, that Wright fully planned on giving the invocation in Springfield before Obama rescinded the offer just hours before the event:

After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.

But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.

"Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack," Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. "One of his members had talked him into uninviting me," Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama's campaign advisers.

There is a contemporaneous report from Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times that Wright was in Springfield that morning and led the family and Senator Dick Durbin in a private prayer just before the event started. But Wright's explanation yesterday about some private/political dichotomy of the event is evasive and disingenuous.

In the Times interview, Wright was even more specific about why he was disinvited:

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama."

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."

That Rolling Stone article, authored by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, appeared in the February 22, 2007 issue (incidentally, at some point the title of the article online was changed from "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama" to "Destiny's Child"). It's not clear whether the magazine had just hit news stands or whether Obama had gotten a sneak peek at the piece, but it doesn't take long to find the part that gave Obama heartburn:

And there is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a sprawling, profane bear of a preacher, a kind of black ministerial institution, with his own radio shows and guest preaching gigs across the country. Wright takes the pulpit here one Sunday and solemnly, sonorously declares that he will recite ten essential facts about the United States. "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones. "Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!" There is thumping applause; Wright has a cadence and power that make Obama sound like John Kerry. Now the reverend begins to preach. "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!" The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS SH*T!"

With a bit of digging you can find a fuller version of the Wright sermon Wallace-Wells references which includes the full list of 10 Essential Facts about America. Missing from the Rolling Stone article is Fact #3 (America is still the number one killer in the world), Fact #5 (we supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic), Fact #8 (we started the AIDS virus), Fact #9 (we are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure the Third World people live in grinding poverty), and Fact #10 (we are selfish, self-centered ego egotists, who are arrogant and ignorant).

At the last debate, Barack Obama was asked specifically about disinviting Rev. Wright to his presidential announcement. Here is the exchange:

MR. GIBSON: Senator Obama, since you last debated, you made a significant speech in this building on the subject of race and your former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And you said subsequent to giving that speech that you never heard him say from the pulpit the kinds of things that so have offended people.

But more than a year ago, you rescinded the invitation to him to attend the event when you announced your candidacy. He was to give the invocation. And according to the reverend, I'm quoting him, you said to him, "You can get kind of rough in sermons. So what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public." I'm quoting the reverend. But what did you know about his statements that caused you to rescind that invitation?

SENATOR OBAMA: Well --

MR. GIBSON: And if you knew he got rough in sermons, why did it take you more than a year to publicly disassociate yourself from his remarks?

SENATOR OBAMA: Well, understand that I hadn't seen the remarks that ended up playing on youTube repeatedly. This was a set of remarks that had been quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine and we looked at them and I thought that they would be a distraction since he had just put them forward.

But, Charlie, I've discussed this extensively. Reverend Wright is somebody who made controversial statements but they were not of the sort that we saw that offended so many Americans. And that's why I specifically said that these comments were objectionable; they're not comments that I believe in. (emphasis added)

Obama initially declared he didn't think "my church is actually particularly controversial" and said that he was never in the pews when Wright made any of the comments captured on video. Then, in his big speech on race in Philadelphia in March, Obama offered the following vague admission:

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.

We now know from Obama's answer at the last debate that he had seen Rev. Wright's remarks in Rolling Stone in Feburary of 2007 and deemed them to be enough of a problem to deep six the Reverend from speaking at his announcement. At the same time, Obama is now characterizing those remarks as "not of the sort that we saw that offended so many Americans." Go read the quote from the Rolling Stone article again. I doubt most Americans would agree, which only lends itself to the notion that Obama hasn't been fully forthcoming about what he knew about his pastor's incendiary language and when he knew it.