For anyone who might have thought, “I wish I knew more about what the Rev. Jeremiah Wright really thinks about our country,” the last three days have provided an embarrassment of riches. Wright has been MIA since an edited version of some of his sermons rocked Obama’s campaign last month but he returned with a vengeance on Friday, appearing on Bill Moyers’ show for a fairly decorous (and heavily edited) return to the public eye. Then last night he spoke to the NAACP convention in Detroit in manner more familiar to those who have seen more of his sermons than the snippets from the infamous YouTube tape. Then this morning came the piece de resistance, a speech (picked up by all the cable news networks) to the National Press Club that was more secular (and sarcastic) than either previous performance — followed by a Q&A period in which all hell broke loose again.

Asked about his comments comparing the terrorist attacks of 9.11 to “America’s chickens coming home to roost” (an echo of Malcolm X’s response to the assassination of JFK), he said, “You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back on you.” And questioned about his patriotism he replied, “I served six years in the military, does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?”

Over at Fox News the Pepsodent twins they have hosting the morning news were beside themselves with glee, poring over their notebooks, as excited as kids who just got a pony for Christmas. Rather than rip into Wright themselves (they like to leave the heavy hitting to the show’s evening stars, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity), they let the initial condemnation be voiced by one of the network’s house Negroes, Juan Williams, who clucked in predictable fashion over the reverend’s failure to disavow his own beliefs. At CNN, on the other hand, the reaction was slightly more tempered. Wright’s speech was listed at the top of the hour (9 am EST) as one of three major stories breaking (fires in California and the man who kept his incestuous family in an underground apartment being the other two), and their morning crew (again, not the sharpest knives in the network’s drawer) turned the damage estimation over to CNN commentators Roland Martin and David Gergen. Gergen, a political gun-for-hire, predicted bad things for Obama while the more Barack-friendly Martin (who had covered the Detroit speech the night before with Soledad O’Brien, the two of them dressed in matching dashikis) said it was the senator’s challenge to distance himself from his former pastor. “He needs to remind people, ‘I am the one running for president.'”

True dat. But even those who might be leaning Obama’s way are going to wonder, who brought this guy to the party? Personally, I find Wright a dynamic and compelling speaker. The best thing about Moyers’ show were the longer clips from the infamous sermons that put his controversial remarks in context, and it would be worth looking at the tape to get the full story. And having been to a few African-American churches, and heard a few preachers who come from the same tradition, I got some of the street-based humor and calculated outrageousness that stitched together his speeches last night and this morning. (He said Jesus was “playing the dozens” when he called His enemies a “brood of vipers.”)

But most voters don’t want the full story, as previous elections have proven time and again, and most white Americans don’t know from the African-American church tradition — sing-song hyperbole, passion and playfulness all mixed up — and don’t want to. The campaign can console itself with knowing that Wright rejected Obama for rejecting (if not disowning) him and promised that if he were elected, he would give him a hard time, too.

Right now, that looks like a big if. The success of Obama’s campaign going forward will depend on how he handles the questions about Wright, something he feels like he has already done with his speech on race in Philadelphia this month. But just as Wright tried to win back his own story — his life, his dignity — by setting out to speak for himself instead of having his identity nibbled to death by sound bites, so Obama must now try and set his record straight. Tell the voters of Indiana and North Carolina, if not the nation at large, where he differs from his former pastor, and why. He no longer has the luxury of following the advice Wright says he got from his mother: “Better to be quiet and let other people think you a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt.”