It's the Pregnant Pause Gab Fest.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Friday, March 21, 2008, I'm Dale Wilman.

On this week's agenda, the Barack Obama speech, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.

The Supreme Court takes up guns, and David professes a fascination for pregnant men.

And now, to introduce the discussion, here's John.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.

I'm John Dickerson.

I'm here with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon.

This week, Emily, Barack Obama gave a very big speech on race. We've had a few days to chew it over. What's your reaction? I thought it was a great speech. I guess we should do it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have rushed into that. He gave a speech in response, responding really to some remarks by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who said some very incendiary

things. And so he felt it was necessary to give this nearly 5,000 word speech over 45 minutes.

Emily, your thoughts.

Right. Well, so Obama has been kind of avoiding direct confrontation with the issue of race

and claiming to transcend race. but these YouTube clips of Reverend Wright

made it impossible for him to keep doing that. And I think in the end, it's probably a good

thing for him and certainly for the country that he had to confront this issue. Because while

he didn't, I mean, you pointed out, John, that he didn't sort of directly address

each statement.

He really talked in a moving, kind of coherent, comprehensive way about why African Americans

have a particular history of injustice, but also about why other groups, including white

people, feel resentment about various burdens and disadvantage.

They feel that they shoulder.

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