The pastor of Barack Obama’s church is back in the news after a videotape of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright surfaced yesterday. In the videotape of a fiery sermon delivered Christmas Day, Wright is shown saying:

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York, and we never batted an eye,” Wright says. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is brought right back in our own front yards.”

While this is something that I myself have said, and probably many of you as well, it’s obviously a radical statement for a gentlemanly candidate like Obama to be associated with and intensifies the projection of race into the election season. Transiting Pluto is approaching an exact opposition to Venus in his chart which shows that his relationships could become a big problem for him.

Obama responded on the Huffington Post:

All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

With Rev. Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

It’s unfortunate that Obama feels he has to throw his pastor under the bus in an attempt to appease the brewing conflict, because there are issues arising that could do some good if they were discussed openly. But I can also see where the Reverend Wright may have decided to take advantage of his fifteen minutes of fame as the pastor to the leading Presidential candidate, and step up on his pulpit for some truthtelling. That, after all, is what Pluto is all about.