Political Insider: New Pastor Eruption Puts Obama on Defensive

Just as news about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's onetime pastor and spiritual mentor, was starting to fade from the headlines, a new pastor eruption promised to keep questions of race, extremism and rage before the eyes of voters.

It won't do Obama any good with Jewish voters, either, since the pastor - the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a white Catholic priest - once called Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a  "gift from God to a sick, sick world," according to an AP report.

In a recent guest sermon at Obama's former  church on Chicago's South Side, an over-the-top Pfleger  mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying she felt entitled to the presidency because she was Bill Clinton's wife - and because she is white.

"When Hillary was crying, and people said that was put on, I really don't believe it was put on," Pfleger told attendees at the South Side Chicago church.  "I really believe that she just always thought 'this is mine. I'm Bill's wife, I'm white and this is mine. I just gotta get up and step into the plate' and then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama,' and she said, 'Oh, damn. Where did you come from? I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show.'"

(Watch video clips of the sermon here:)

Obama responded quickly as video clips of the sermon spread virally on the Internet.

 "As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us,"  the Democratic hopeful said in statement.  "That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric."

In a statement Pfleger expressed "regret" about his words and sorrow "if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them."

But the new controversy seems certain to keep the Jeremiah Wright controversy alive - and add to Obama's problems with many white voters, since  Pfleger is a longtime Obama supporter and friend.

For an interesting analysis of the newest pastor crisis, check out this blog by  Jacques Berlinerblau , program director and associate professor of Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

As Berlinerblau says, it's going to be a "long weekend for the Obama people."

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