After watching Wright's speeches both at the NAACP and the National Press Club in their entirety, I see the good in what Wright is TRYING to do. His overall message is an important one for America to hear and speaks at heart to the concepts of racial reconciliation, respecting difference and in the end, healing. However, there is this little pervasive, pernicious entity here in America, called media. And the media, at bottom,  represents the power structure/status quo. And when you have a candidate, like Barack Obama,  who is opposing the status quo in many of his basic policy concepts (i.e. opposing war, opposing the rich,  opposing big Oil), that status quo will employ all of it's forces --  including, and especially media -- to twist anyone or anything connected to said candidate, in an effort to derail his candidacy. This is the real danger in Wright speaking out at this particular moment in time.

It's not really about Jeremiah Wright, and what he actually meant to say in his recent speeches. For the media, its about which of his words can be isolated and packaged in such a way  as to trigger the  manipulation of  the majority of the American people --  who are not going to take the time to sit down and listen to his sermons or analyze an hour-long speech. . Hence, the media is building a case against Obama of "guilt by association."

But it's not really about Jeremiah Wright at all. Country singer Willie Nelson has repeatedly questioned whether 9/11 was an inside job. Yet, Nelson is not being demonized in the media for repeatedly saying this. In fact, quite the contrary, Nelson is being celebrated with a huge new anniversary box set of all of his recordings. So there is quite a double standard at work here.

There real question that confronts us now is, will the American people allow themselves to be manipulated out of the possibility of electing perhaps the most seriously trans formative presidential candidate of the past 1OO years? Or, quite the opposite,  will we allow ourselves to be duped  once again by the corporate media/status quo at a critical time, and have them choose an "insider" candidate who will serve THEIR interests?

My strongest sense is that the result of the latter option, at this point in our history,  would be disastrous.

Not this time!

Obama 08!