Jeremiah Wright is still a stone around Barack Obama’s neck and his supporters want to lay the same weight on John McCain by using Rev. John Hagee, televangelist and pastor of a Texas mega church who endorsed McCain at McCain’s request.

Jeremiah Wright has made it impossible to pretend that he was quoted out of context so Obama’s supporters have given the candidate a pass and taken to attacking those who told you the truth about Wright in the first place.

Frank Rich writes, in the New York Times, his belief that white people are attacking Wright/Obama and giving a pass to Hagee/McCain. Today in the Sun-Times Andrew Greeley repeats that Hagee hates Catholics.

I hear the same thing from some callers and e-mailers to my show on WLS in Chicago, hometown to Wright and Obama. Rich and the callers are wrong in their belief that the issues neatly parallel.

The issue is not what we know about the ministers. It is what we can learn about the candidates, using what information is available to us.

McCain has a long record of service upon which we can base our decision on his candidacy. Obama has been a senator for a scant three years and half of that has been spent running for president. He was an Illinois state senator where he led the league in voting “present.” His associations are a better barometer of his character than his slim record in elected office. The Rev. Wright matter is one of the pots of paint we are gathering in order to try to create a picture of the candidate that we can hang in our mind on Election Day. Other colors are being added to the pallette.

But since the spin is going to be that it is hypocritical to treat McCain and Hagee differently, let’s take moment to line them up for inspection.

Rich repeats the allegations that Rev. Hagee is anti-Catholic and that he also believes that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment on New Orleans.

Hagee does believe that God attacked New Orleans, possibly to stop a gay parade, and okay, that is wacky, but he defends himself against the anti-Catholic charge.

Rich mocks McCain and his campaign by writing that, “any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.” I wonder why Rich couldn’t get a youngster to look up the Hagee sermon I linked.

In case you have been under a pew somewhere, when Wright was asked directly about his assertions that the American government created AIDS, sells drugs and runs the KKK, all toward the goal of victimizing blacks, he stood behind the charges against his own country. Anyone should have been able to vet Wright pretty quickly from the pew, as apparently Oprah Winfrey did, but Obama couldn’t.

Rich writes, “But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.”

Well, excuse me, but that does matter. In the congregation – not in the congregation. Knows the man as a personal mentor and spiritual leader – is using the guy to try to get some evangelical props. Wrote a book titled after the pastor’s sermon – doesn’t listen to the pastor’s sermons. One of these things is not like the other.

Got that? You are a thin thinker if you expected Obama to have figured out in less than 20 years that Wright is a loon. Give the man some time! Will Rich give Obama 20 years to figure out Ahmadinijad?

I come not to praise John McCain but to make the case that Frank Rich should stop hating his fellow white people who don’t think as he does; which is to say thinly.

That McCain went from calling some televangelists “agents of intolerance” to courting Hagee’s endorsement and then back to condemning things Hagee said, or is purported to have said, is no surprise to anybody watching McCain. He seems not to have a central moral and political philosophy other than what works for him today. The so-called straight talker can’t keep his story straight on a number of issues.

But Hagee is a drop in a bucket full of reasons conservatives have for not endorsing McCain. And that list is compiled from a substantial political record.

Rich might also note that if McCain is getting a reprieve at the moment it is only because he won his race and there is a really interesting one going on within his opposition.

Rich’s complaint boils down to, “Well, so, what about your guy? Huh?”

When you are out of arguments, call the other side a bunch of racists.

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Jerry Agar is a talk show host on 890 AM WLS in Chicago.