So, with deadlines piled up like loan sharks waiting to collect outside my door, I finished my LAT column yesterday nice and early so I could get to my other debts. I wrote a column about how Obama should give a major speech — a la Mitt Romney’s Mormonism speech — addressing the real issues involved in the Wright controversy. Then, late in the afternoon, while I was deep into other things I saw that Byron had posted something in the Corner about how Obama was going to give a major speech on the Wright matter. This was inconvenient and required a considerable reworking. The problem: My LAT column then goes out on the syndicate wire. But I can’t put this out there because the time other newspapers — not to mention NRO — pick it up, the speech will have happened. So…

Here’s my LAT column on what I think Obama needs to do in this speech. I will write a new column today in response to the speech, I think.

Here’s the kicker:

Obama preaches unity. Well, real unity requires real truth-telling and the ability to tell right from wrong, and Wright from right.
I, for one, have no interest in being united with Wright or anyone who insists that America is an evil, racist, damnable nation bent on murdering black people — and I suspect neither will many general election voters.
Obama’s power base is made up of black voters and the upscale left-wingers who condescend to them. Well, it is time he spoke truth to that power. If the eloquent, self-proclaimed truth-teller and would-be first black president can’t manage that, he should go straight from would-be to never was.