A profile of Barack Obama's late mother is in today's New York Times.

While that story may help Obama, stories about his pastor will not, as Kathryn Jean Lopez points out in this piece.

The more Americans hear this man who’s been an influential part of Obama’s life for two decades, the more they’re going to have the audacity to look beyond Obama’s inspirational milquetoast speeches, probing what makes him tick, what influences him, who advises him, what he believes. And not just on Sundays. It’s the Wright thing.

Among other things, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright says that Black Americans should not sing "God Bless America", but "God Damn America". According to this ABC News story...

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

If this rhetoric is even close to what Obama believes, then he has a real problem. Even if Obama disagrees with Wright's views, the fact that he has such a close, personal connection to Wright (who presided over Obama's marriage, baptised his children, and gave Obama the title to his book, "The Audacity of Hope") will raise doubts about whether or not Obama, as in the NAFTA issue, is simply telling us things we want to hear, but really believes something else. The Clinton people have to be salivating at the prospect of getting this guy's views greater play, and they are already getting much help from Conservative talk radio on doing just that. Now, of course, the MSM and the blogosphere are also getting in on the act (myself included). We'll see how the Obama campaign handles this one.