U.S. clergyman the Rev. Jeremiah Wright says he took attacks on him with a grain of salt but was hurt when Barack Obama removed him from an advisory group.

Wright, for many years the U.S. president-elect's pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, became a lightning rod for Obama's opponents when clips of his fiery sermons criticizing the treatment of U.S. blacks surfaced on television and the Internet. In an interview with XM Radio, Wright said he took those attacks in stride, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.

But while acknowledging he knew Obama would have to distance himself from him, Wright maintained was dismayed when Obama removed him from his African-American religious advisory committee without sending word, the newspaper said.

Wright told XM that watching Obama's Election Day rally in Chicago on television was bittersweet, saying, "It was like a mixed bag of being proud of him and being blessed to have lived to see something my parents would never have believed was going to happen while at the same time having been put up as the whipping boy by the media to be the weapon of mass destruction to destroy his candidacy."