I am dumbfounded that there has been no drop in Barack Obama’s standing in the polls following revelations that he sat in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years and did nothing, publicly or privately, to voice disagreement with Wright’s hate speech.

Indeed, Obama’s poll numbers are going up. The most recent CNN national poll shows Obama with 50 percent and Hillary with 40 percent of likely Democratic voters.

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One reason for the uptick in Obama’s popularity may be that Hillary Clinton has had to explain her out-and-out falsehood of having been under sniper fire years ago in Bosnia. Her account of landing in Bosnia amidst sniper fire was totally demolished by a video clip taken at the time and now flashed all over TV and the Internet showing her strolling across the tarmac with Chelsea to receive flowers and kisses from a waiting child.

Are the actions of our two United States Senators, both candidates for the presidency, to be condemned equally? I don’t think so. Hillary’s failure, as gross as it may be, is related to self-promotion. Barack’s failure, in my judgment, is an out-and-out failure of moral strength, as he was unwilling to stand up to his bigoted minister for 20 years while Wright denounced from the pulpit whites, Jews and the State of Israel.

We learned recently that Wright’s defamatory comments published in church bulletins were, on occasion, also directed at Italians. ABC News reported on March 27, “Trumpet Newsmagazine, of which Wright is the chief executive officer, published an article written by Wright in which he described the crucifixion of Jesus as ‘public lynching Italian style.’”

He also wrote, according to CNSNews.com, “The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans.” Finally, CNN reported on March 28 that “They [church bulletins] also quote a historian who said that ‘what the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews.’”

Let me report on the mail I received after I wrote a column criticizing Senator Obama and Rev. Wright. Some of that correspondence defended Wright’s attacks on the U.S., whites and Jews and Obama. Here are some excerpts from three readers:

● “I have read your recent message re: Sen. Obama’s speech and I find your attacks totally unconvincing. The fact that you disregard the Reverend’s positive contributions to his community and the positive aspects of the relationship between the Reverend and the Senator demonstrates either ignorance or bad faith, either of which is unbecoming of a man of your influence.”

● “I disagree with all that [Wright’s charges against America] and ALL his hate speech. But I have no problem concluding that it does not represent Obama and that Obama should not be deemed unworthy of being president because he embraced the good in Wright and did not walk away when he heard the bad.”

● “I thought Sen. Obama’s race speech was one of the most inspiring, hopeful, uplifting speeches I have ever heard in modern politics. You and I have been in politics long enough to know that guilt by association is a great way to create doubts about a candidate, but I have no doubt Sen. Obama has the best chance of getting us beyond stereotypes.”

These readers seek to excuse Obama’s conduct, but I remain unconvinced. Obama told us in his brilliant and moving March 18 speech that “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother,” who engaged, he said, in racial stereotyping.

But now, on television talk programs, he tells us a somewhat different story. As New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote on March 29, “Mr. Obama, who has run the gamut of news shows in recent weeks to defuse the ado over his relationship with Mr. Wright, had no trouble finding longwinded words to demarcate his allegiance to his longtime pastor. ‘Had the Reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws,’ he said, ‘then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying there at the church.’”

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