That would be Rosie O'Donnell, echoing Jeremiah Wright.

Rosie O'Donnell defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright on the "Today" show on Monday, saying Barack Obama's former pastor "made sense to me."

The comedian also compared herself to Wright, saying "some people confuse passion for rage." She also came to Wright's defense on his views on the origins of AIDS.

Yeah, it is true that some people confuse passion with rage. But some folks also confuse celebrity with intelligence, which is why you are even asked your opinion on serious political topics.

And that Wright made sense to you is no surprise, Rosie. We all heard you on The View, where you stomped off because rational comments by one of your fellow panelists didn't make sense and therefore enraged you. You have no more contact with reality than Wright does.

And then there is this gem -- proving that O'Donnell doesn't know squat.

O'DONNELL: But Kathie Lee, you know what it's like for someone to pull one quote out of context for you.

He was comparing it to when the government did give syphilis to black Americans for 40 years. What he was saying is in his history, in his genetic memory, he knows what it's like for the government to infect his own people because he lived through those Tuskegee experiments. And that's what he was talking about.

The problem? The government did not give these men the clap, no matter how often the lie is repeated. What did happen was that a group of black men with advanced syphilis were not given treatment for it, even as they were told they were being treated. A recent column by National Review's Jonah Goldberg recounts what actually happened.

So what did happen? In 1932, public health researchers set out to study syphilis, particularly among African Americans, who had higher infection rates than whites. They recruited 399 black men who already had syphilis. The doctors infected no one. In fact, the patients were selected in the first place because they were tertiary-stage syphilitics who were no longer contagious.

The researchers studied the progress of the disease, without treating it, for 40 years.

Prior to the availability of penicillin in the 1940s and 1950s, the researchers couldn’t have treated the men even if they wanted to. Even after standardized penicillin treatments were available, it wasn’t clear that the patients could have been helped. Some of the doctors believed that treating the decades-long infections would kill the men.

Among scholars who’ve studied Tuskegee, there’s a lot of debate about how much — if any — racism was involved in the experiment. But no one disputes that Tuskegee had nothing whatsoever to do with genocide or even a desire to spread the disease among the black population.

Were the actions of those researchers reprehensible? Certainly.

Were they racist? Possibly.

Were they genocidal? No.

Were they what Wright, O'Donnell, and any number of other folks claim claim, often out of simple ignorance and the acceptance of folk tales that have grown up around this indefensible abuse of nearly 400 seriously ill souls? Absolutely not!

Goldberg offers this analysis as well -- one based less upon his own ideology than upon the research of a respected academic who has studied the Tuskegee Experiment at length.

Indeed, it’s worth noting that the Tuskegee study, launched during the pre-dawn of the New Deal-era, was symptomatic of arrogant liberal government. The study “emerged out of a liberal progressive public health movement concerned about the health and well-being of the African-American population,” writes University of Chicago professor Richard Schweder. He adds: “The study was done with the full knowledge, endorsement and participation of African-American medical professionals, hospitals and research institutes.”

In other words, there were a lot of dirty hands in this disgusting program -- and a good number of them were leading members of the black academic and medical communities of the period.

But let us return to the inanity of Rosie and the insanity of Jeremiah Wright (who, incidently, raves with all the delusional paranoia of the victims of Tuskegee in the final stages of their illness).

So let's come back to it -- there was no infection of African-Americans with AIDS by the government, just as there was no infection of black men with syphilis at Tuskegee DURING THE ROOSEVELT AND TRUMAN ADMINISTRATIONS when the bulk of the Tuskegee Experiment was carried out. And we don't need the vile untruths spread by voices of ignorance like Rosie and Jeremiah.

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