Rev. Jeremiah Wright's defiant insistence on a tragically wrong world view gave Obama no choice but to cut all ties and say good-bye to his longtime pastor. Obama obviously has struggled with that decision, but he was right, finally and with finality, to disown Wright.

Now, couched in troubling terms and intoned in the basso profundo of the GOP's gravest concerns, come more questions, ones intended only to prolong the controversy and provoke suspicion.

"What did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?" asks Houston Chronicle blogger Craig Yates, using the classic Watergate interrogative as if Obama had sinned against the U.S. Constitution by listening to some fiery or even wacky sermons.

But despite the GOP's overwrought (past tense of overWright?) warnings about Obama, the country is not ducking for cover. The sky, as it turns out, hasn't fallen. Obama admitted in Philadelphia that he heard Wright say "controversial" things in the past — presumably for years, but he also has indicated that Wright has changed. In rejecting his former pastor, Obama said, "The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I have come to know over 20 years."

It's likely that Wright's views took decades to harden into the confused resentments he harbors now. Wright's promotional tour put his ego — and his mouth — into overdrive. Never before had he commanded a national audience hanging on his every word (or so ready to hoist him on his). It must have been the adrenaline rush that cracked the remnant of his reserve. Even in the sermons posted on YouTube, Wright never ranted so negatively or for so long as he did at the National Press Club on Monday.

Assuming that Obama was completely acquainted with Wright's views, it's still obvious he does not share Wright's views. It's also too easy to conclude that Obama used Trinity to make political connections. No, there was genuine hurt in his face yesterday. There was sadness in his reluctance to separate himself from the man who gave God's blessing to his marriage, baptized his children, brought him to Christ and helped him to find a place of belonging in Chicago's black community. There was something wounded in Obama's speech.

What changed for Obama? Maybe Rev. Wright changed. Or maybe Obama just felt betrayed. Very likely, Obama realized that, when pressed, Wright took a stand not for something transcendent like trying to change the country, but for something petty like trying to rehabilitate his own tarnished image. Whatever pedestal Wright may fancy himself upon, he stands now only on feet of clay.

Obama, too, has been revealed as imperfect, thanks mostly to Rev. Wright. But Obama's imperfection has nothing to do with being racially divisive, jarringly contemptuous of mainstream values or inclined to conspiracy theories. Obama's weakness is that a part of him remains torn between recognizing the human virtues in his former pastor and seeing the prideful man who endangers his candidacy.

This week marks the end of Barack Obama's political age of innocence, but his candidacy will mature. And that is a good thing. I would rather back a candidate who needs to regain some footing than one who needs to recover a heart. I still don't doubt Obama's.

If the country is lucky, Obama's unequivocal rejection of his pastor might even mark the beginning of the end for America's racial naivete. And that would be monumental.

One last "note." Folk singer Woody Guthrie must have seen the future when he sang:

The telephone rang. It jumped off the wall,
That was the preacher, a-makin' his call.
He said, "Kind friends, this may be the end
You have your last chance at salvation from sin!"

Well, the churches was jammed and the churches was packed,
But that dusty old dust storm it blew so black
That the preacher could not read a word of his text,
So he folded his specs, took up a collection, sayin'

So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh;
So long, it's been good to know yuh.
But this dusty old dust is a-gettin' my home
And I've gotta be driftin' along.