Probably the worst thing about Hillary Clinton invoking RFK’s assassination as a justification for staying in the race has been the “who-me?” aftermath of it, the various explanations offered by her camp and her. Speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, SD, Clinton defended sticking around beyond her use-by date saying, “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Meaning: anything can happen, right? You never know in this crazy, mixed-up, gun-clinging country of ours. It ain’t over ’til it’s over etc. As news of her comments spread (June is coming right up, folks) and Obama’s camp showed admirable restraint even as the candidate himself was reportedly outraged, one of her spokespeople tried to turn the tables, like the fellow who shows you a pornographic picture and says what a dirty mind you have. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historic examples of the nominating process going well into the summer. Any reading into beyond that would be inaccurate and outrageous,” said Mo Eleithee, keeping a straight face the whole time.

When that didn’t play, Clinton tried a more straightforward apology, telling reporters in a supermarket, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator [Edward] Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I’m honored to hold Senator [Robert] Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.”

So it is about her, after all! You see, she holds the same seat RFK did, and she went sailing with Ted when Obama was still working the streets in Chicago, and hey, we all make mistakes. Looking at the the video of her remarks she certainly doesn’t look like she’s at the top of her game and there she does have my sympathies. I would hate to have people filming me first thing in the morning, trying to sound smart before the coffee kicked in.

But she’s supposed to be the candidate who’s good to go at three am, on Day One, no less. For someone who supposedly has her wits about her at all times, she’s coming off as mighty punchy — or calculating — these days. Was she giving voice to an unconscious death wish for her opponent? I doubt it. But even if this was only a 1%, a girl-can-dream-can’t-she response, why would Obama want a potential Lady Macbeth for a running mate? It would be reasonable to assume someone is out to get him but you don’t want to have to bring the food taster with you when you’re having lunch with your No. 2.

The alternative explanation –that she just said something stupid and tasteless because she was thinking about the Kennedys, even though she said the same thing to Time back in March — is almost as bad. “Did I say ‘kill Castro’? My bad. I had been thinking about the Castro district in San Francisco, since I’m actually a lesbian. Oops, did it again. I had been in Lisbon, Portugal, recently and…” She’s either discombobulated or disingenuous, and I know which one I’m putting my money on.

It was too good to be true. Not that I ever thought Hillary was going to go away quietly (what in her career would suggest that course of action?) but I did think she might move aside and let the gentleman do his thing with a little bit of class. But now she is comparing Florida to Zimbabwe, blaming her defeat on sexism and misogyny and saying that Obama can’t woo white working class voters.

Well maybe he can’t — in Kentucky and West Virginia. And frankly, I wish he had spent more time in those states trying to convert those crackers before the primaries because he’s going to need them before the general election. But the WWCV in Oregon liked him just fine and anyone who thinks there are no rednecks in Oregon haven’t spent much time there. Right outside of Ashland, the site of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and one of the best organic restaurants on the west coast are pockets of dogpatch as derelict as any in Alabama. And a lot of those folks voted for Obama.

Maybe Obama’s problem is, as Sam Stein suggested in the Huffington Post, more geographic than socioeconomic. West Virginia strikes me as more of a backwash than Oregon; the poorest pockets of the state are like the land time forgot and I have literally been afraid to stop in some towns there lest the locals come out and eat me. Oregon, on the other hand, has that liberty-loving, California-hating gene deep in its DNA — but its also got Nike and its longtime advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy; it’s got Reed College and the legacy of Ken Kesey. It’s got a whole weird dimension that I like to think is a lot more like America than, well, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Not that I think Obama could, or should, write those states off, especially the former. But it in my fervent hope that his new jack candidacy speaks to a country that is ready to get outside of the holler, a country tired of being locked in the old sandtraps of the past. America may not look like Oregon, either — I hate any state that claims to represent the rest of us — but maybe the dream of this candidacy is best reflected in the promise of the west, all that majestic beauty and natural resources, still mostly unspoiled. Give us mountains to match our man.

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.”