The good news for Barack Obama: It's tough to find an editorial or column in the state of Illinois today that's not about the speech he delivered yesterday, titled "A More Perfect Union."

The better news: Even those local media who have criticized parts of the speech seem to view his address not just as an effective campaign moment, but as an instant classic in the history of American oration. Obama's reflections on race and religion are being widely treated as an opportunity for the country to grapple with our longstanding racial divides.

For instance, in his Tribune column, Clarence Page called the speech "a rare outpouring of brilliance, sophistication and personal frankness."

The Sun-Times' Mary Mitchell wrote that "[y]ou cannot have grown up in America and not be touched by Obama's candor" and referred to the address as "nothing short of brilliant."

Meanwhile, Mark Brown argued in the Sun-Times that the Illinois Senator had effectively put to bed any lingering doubts about his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

Many white Americans are willing to use any excuse to justify their racial fears, and Obama could not allow anyone to think that Wright's most extreme views were secretly his own. But he also had to somehow convey that he both understands how Wright could come to hold such views and why whites could have such fears.

It was in this passage that Obama hit me where I've lived:

"I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community," he said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much she loves as anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."[...]

I see real wisdom in this speech, a man who is learning as he goes along, a man who knows who he is.

The most enthusiastic praise came not from the columnists but from the editorial boards. The State Journal-Register confidently characterized Obama's address as one for the history books:

We believe Barack Obama's speech Tuesday tackling race will resound far beyond 2008. It is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to speak in such blunt and realistic terms on what has been this country's most divisive issue for centuries.

Regardless of the outcome of the Democratic primary race or even the November general election, Obama's words Tuesday should set a new tone for how all Americans perceive and address inequalities rooted in race.

The Sun-Times editorial page goes one further, writing that the speech "called to mind other piercing addresses by the likes of FDR, Kennedy and King." (The Sun-Times published a helpful round-up of impressions from across the county and the blogosphere.)

Of course, the "Big Speech" also had its critics. But it's interesting that even those who set out to tear down Obama's discourse felt the need, at the outset, to express their admiration for what he achieved.

More after the jump ...

Conservative columnist John Kass opens his column as follows:

Sen. Barack Obama not only confronted race in his speech Tuesday, he transcended it, and no honest American ear could ever be immune to the pitch, tone and quality of his words; not yours, not mine.

So much of what he said was undeniable and true and honestly spoken, in the calm and clear voice of a reasonable man explaining America's most unreasonable and hateful topic.

From this starting point the column takes a turn, criticizing Obama for saying he can "no more disown him [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."

Kass responds to this line with a good dose of righteous indignation, writing that it illustrates Obama's willingness to invoke his grandmother as a "rhetorical device." But he seems to overlook that Obama has described Wright as "like an Uncle" to him. Holding up these two familial figures, his adopted "uncle" and his grandmother, it seems clear that Obama was trying to make a point about the interconnected and sometimes ugly history of black and white America, a point apparently lost on Kass.

The most perplexing line of criticism against the "Big Speech" came from two different sources, both at the Sun-Times. Like Kass, Carol Marin and Lynn Sweet both begin their assessements by lauding Obama's accomplishment, but they go on to assail the Senator for his treatment of Geraldine Ferraro.

Marin wrote:

As a self-described "imperfect" candidate, Obama understands that we all should be judged by the sum total of our contributions minus the times we fell down, the places we failed.

It applies to his pastor. It also applies to Ferraro. It would have been fairer if the senator had found a way to extend the generosity of his spirit to both of them.

And Sweet:

As charitable as he [Obama] was toward Wright, he had found no mercy for Geraldine Ferraro.

These observations beg the question: were Marin and Sweet watching the same address as the rest of the county? In the speech I watched Obama said:

I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. [Italics mine]

In these lines Obama extends exactly the same "charity" and "generosity" to both Ferraro and Rev. Wright. He implies that they are both decent but flawed individuals who should not be judged solely by a few remarks they made. Furthermore, Obama went on to condemn the political and media culture that seized on Wright and Ferraro's controversial statements, which he described as "distractions":

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

Regardless of their strange line of criticism, Sweet still has to admit that Obama's was "a great speech," and Marin says it "opened a door to a discussion this country has never successfully had on what still poisonously divides us."

With criticism like this, Obama might be asking himself, who needs praise?