After a string of public appearances by Rev. Jeremiah Wright were cancelled following the circulation of his radical sermons via video in March and his church web site was sanitized, God-o-Meter assumed that Wright was cooperating with the Obama campaign in an attempt to defuse the controversy surrounding his relationship with the presidential candidate. Wright’s performance on Monday blew that assumption to smithereens, and today’s The New York Times traces the long unraveling of the once super-close Wright/Obama friendship, including the mounting tensions between Wright and Obama’s campaign advisors:

Aides say that they and the candidate came to feel that they had no control over the pastor, no sense of what next he might do or say.

With Wright totally off the Obama reservation, he threatens to pop up publicly in coming weeks and months and seek revenge against the campaign (God-o-Meter, by the way, saw this thirst for score-settling a while back). Obama may have denounced Wright this week, but that doesn’t mean the news media will ignore the pastor whenever he appears publicly. He’s somewhat weakened by Obama’s denouncement, but Wright’s nonetheless become a persistent threat to the campaign.

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