The Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Andy Warhol famously said that "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." He was referring to celebrities, who seem to come and go with the phases of the moon. Check the tabloids. Can you remember last month's famous person?

The celebrity du jour is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is making the most of his time in the sun as media darling, enjoying every moment of it. Barrack Obama supporters fear his former pastor's "God damn America" and "we had it coming to us on 9/11 " pronouncements will damage the senator's presidential hopes.

Is all this a tempest in a teapot or the harbinger of revolution? Given that many people, not only blacks, agree with his views or at least understand the basis of his anger and sympathize, he cannot be dismissed as a crackpot. Will he outlive his "15 minutes"? Will other, more strident voices come to be heard? Has the seed been sown? In a troubled and divided gun-happy nation, a spark could set off a chain of events leading to God knows what. The Clinton-Obama tussle would become irrelevant.

I wrote all of the above a few days ago, but decided to await the results of the Illinois and North Carolina primaries before finishing. The Wright brouhaha seems not to have affected the outcome after all. Good.