New York Times - 5/1/08

Late Monday night, in the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, N.C., Barack Obama’s long, slow fuse burned to an end. Earlier that day he had thumbed through his BlackBerry, reading accounts of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s latest explosive comments on race and America. But his remarks to the press this day had amounted to a shrug of frustration. Only in this hotel room, confronted with the televised replay of the combustible pastor, did the candidate realize the full import of the remarks, his aides say. At the same time, aides fielded phone calls and e-mail from uncommitted superdelegates, several demanding that the candidate speak out more forcefully. As Mr. Obama told close friends after watching the replay, he felt dumbfounded, even betrayed, particularly by Mr. Wright’s implication that Mr. Obama was being hypocritical. He could not tolerate that. The next afternoon, Mr. Obama held a news conference and denounced his former pastor’s views as “divisive and destructive,” giving “comfort to those who prey on hate.” And so, with those remarks, a tightly knit relationship finally came apart — Mr. Wright had married Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, and baptized their children. Theirs was a long and painful falling out, marked by a degree of mutual incomprehension, friends and aides say. It began at the moment Mr. Obama declared his candidacy, when he abruptly uninvited his pastor from delivering an invocation, injuring the older man’s pride and fueling his anger.

Clinton Talks to Fox TV About Obama and Wright
Washington Post - 5/1/08

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” called the recent comments on race by Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., “offensive and outrageous” and said she was glad Obama had “finally” distanced himself from Wright. “Well, I take offense” at Wright’s comments, she told the show’s conservative host, Bill O’Reilly, who flew to South Bend, Ind., for the interview. “I think it’s offensive and outrageous,” she added. “And, you know, I’m going to express my opinion — others can express theirs. . . . And people have to, you know, decide what they believe. And I sure don’t believe the United States government was behind AIDS.” Of Obama, she said: “I think that he made his views clear, finally, that he disagreed. And I think that’s what he had to do.” It was the second interview in four days by one of the Democratic presidential candidates on a television network that many liberals say is biased against them; Obama appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” O’Reilly is a frequent critic of Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton, but his audience includes some of the working-class voters Clinton is trying to woo in Indiana and North Carolina.