What would Shakespeare have done with our ongoing drama, "The Politician and the Preacher"? What depths of psychological and political insight might the Bard have plumbed depicting the rich relationship between that apostle of hope, Barack Obama, and his fiery pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.?

Alas, all the world's no longer a stage. It is a YouTube video, a cherry-picked sound bite and a 24/7 news cycle that spews information too quickly for the brain to process -- but at just the right speed for the knee to jerk. Instead of powerful Shakespearean dramas, we get weak soap operas crafted by talking heads and Internet bloggers.

The snippets that surfaced on YouTube 10 days ago showed Obama's former Chicago pastor calling America the "U.S. of KKK-A" and saying the nation got what it deserved on Sept. 11 because of the country's long support of "state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans." Wright thundered that the government gives African-Americans "the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, not God bless America. ... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."

Predictably, right-wing commentators blasted Wright's "anti-American hate speech." The mainstream media turned a complex controversy into an empty morality play hinged on false penance. Obama was given a stark choice: Denounce the comments or risk your candidacy.

At first he tried old-school duplicity. While rejecting Wright's "inflammatory and appalling remarks" in a March 14 statement published on the Huffington Post, he indicated that he had never heard his pastor utter such views.

Four days later, as the controversy grew, Obama admitted in a televised speech that he was familiar with the comments of the man whose church he has attended for 20 years, who performed his marriage ceremony, baptized his children and gave him the title for one of his best-selling books, "The Audacity of Hope."

He repeated his denunciations of Wright's statements but refused to disown his close friend (how could he?). As he walked that political tightrope, Obama also rejected the "caricature" of Wright that the media created to fit its script for the scandal.

He reminded us that Wright, like so many other ministers, has worked to relieve the suffering of the poor and afflicted, to raise up the downtrodden.

Indeed, the media have ignored Wright's many calls for unity.

In an interview with the German magazine Spiegel last year, Wright asserted: "You can be a good Christian and be pro-life. You can be a good Christian and be pro-choice." In the same piece he was quoted as saying: "We need to stop lumping folks together and start living together. Otherwise, we're going to kill each other off because you don't believe what I believe."

Not that simple

These quotes do not negate Wright's strident comments, but they show us that he is a complicated man and not a one-note hater.

"The videos do suggest that Wright engages in some race-baiting," Duke historian Timothy Tyson said. "But while many African-Americans expressed their fury at the United States, they have also pushed us to embrace our highest ideals."

Tyson said Wright's remarks reflect a central paradox of the black experience: the love for a country that often disappoints. As the controversy reveals, it is a complex story that we are unwilling to confront directly in our national politics.

Obama crystallized this point in his Huffington Post statement, when he wrote, "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies."

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