Please remember that you are choosing to read my opinions.

This just in... Rev. Wright isn't running for office! This might be a shock to those of you who have got this impression from the incredible coverage he's gotten in the past weeks. The whole fiasco has been fascinating for me.

I think it is interesting to see the reactions to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sound bytes. It is interesting to me because of what it says about people in general. They will condemn a person at the drop of a hat, based on very little information, and apparently they'll spread that condemnation around to others that have associated with them, mainly just the other person in the spotlight. He is just one of many people who have been made to seem like a  horrible person for his controversial comments based on a few snippets of their life. I just love how two-dimensional we can make other people seem while maintaining our own depth, free will, and critical thinking skills.

I don't sit here and pretend that I am superior in the matter. I'm as guilty of this as anyone who is likely to read this. Quite frankly, Mindsay is an illustration of this tendency. It is a largely impersonal medium, where what we write in the moment is likely the only thing we are being judged on. One sentence that we say can be a potential hang up. I'm sure there are quite a few people by now that don't particularly like me here on Mindsay, based solely on one or two things I've said.

In contrast, our family and friends can get away with saying things that we don't agree with, holding beliefs we don't share, and we still will rationalize and justify their behavior. At the very least, we are able in some way to drop it. For example, I don't deny that I have racist family members. I don't consider myself so racist, though I also don't claim to be as free of such irrational, judgmental tendencies as I'd like to be. However, I daresay my friends and family probably think I'm a good person and love me regardless of my faults. And, in turn, I don't think that these people are bad. All in all, they are largely good, likable people.

Based on the short clips of Wright's sermons that many of us didn't try to put into context, Wright was made to seem like an evil man that a Presidential candidate shouldn't associate with. That presidential candidate was then said to be a bad person because he associated with that man closely. Even though that presidential candidate never specifically endorsed the things they showed Wright saying, even though he pointed out that he is a real person with his own, separate beliefs like the rest of us, even though he is capable of thinking for himself just like most of us, people are using this against him.

If I had tried to use this argument with someone, I'd consider myself to be a hypocrite. I associate with all sorts of people that say and do things that I don't agree with. Some of them I look up to in many ways. I would even consider some of them very influential on me. That doesn't mean that because I regularly associate with them that I suddenly endorse their every word. It is, in fact, possible to associate with people without believing in everything that they do.

I'm calling for everyone to just be a little more realistic; to stop assuming that others are less capable than ourselves in holding our own, separate beliefs.  I'm pleading with you all to join me in trying to be conscious of the fact that we all have aspects of our beings that aren't captured in a few moments or sentences.