What Rev. Wright is about, and has been about all his adult life, is psychologically separating blacks from their fellow American citizens. The Trinity United Church Of Christ exists for this purpose. This is clear from Wright's sermons, his church bulletin newsletters, his Trumpet magazine articles and interviews, and the TUCC website.

It is OVER for Rev Wright in terms of rehabilitating
his image to the American people. Obama has no choice. He denounces Wright and cuts ALL ties to this church, or his candidacy goes down in flames.

Also, no air time on his criticism of the media.

I see both sides of this. 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 reconciliation, respecting difference and in the end, healing. However, there is this small nasty entity in America, called media. And the media represents the power structure/status quo. And when you have a candidate who is opposing the status quo in many of his basic concepts (by opposing war, by opposing the rich, by opposing big Oil), that status quo will employ it's media to twist anyone or anything connected to Obama, in an effort to derail his candidacy. This is the real danger in Wright speaking out at this particular time.

It's not really about what Wright actually meant, for the media, its about which of his words can be isolated and used as a trigger to manipulate the majority of Americans who are not going to take the time to sit down and listen to him speak for an hour. The media is building a case of "guilt by association."

But it's not really about Wright at all. The country singer Willie Nelson has repeatedly questioned whether 9/11 was an inside job. Yet, he is not being demonized for it. In fact, he 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 here is, will the American people allow themselves to be manipulated out of the possibility of electing the most seriously transformative presidential candidate of the past 100 years? Or will we allow ourselves to be duped again by the media at a critical time?

My strongest sense is that the result of the latter option would be utterly disastrous.

Obama 08

How the hell do you people

YOU people is really classy!

I found it interesting that the pundits seemed to have more of a problem with how Wright delivered his comments than in many ways what was said.

On MSNBC -- which devoted most of its coverage today to the non-stop wall-to-wall carpet bombing of Wright snippets -- pundits said he was not showing enough "humility." At the National Press Club. That he wasn't "apologetic" enough. At the National Press Club. That he was "arrogant" and "full of himself" and "promoting himself" and making this all about him. At the National Press Club. To which he was invited to speak. He didn't just show up and commandeer the microphone.

And sadly, not even the moderator at the event bothered to prepare by listening to any of his "offensive" sermons. And the questions from so-called learned members of the press were not just insipid, but bordering on offensive. Are you patriotic? Indeed.

Uh-oh... I'm getting angry again. Watch out! Angry Black Woman on board!

I don't know any real liberal who uses stupid wingnut catchphrases like "ultra liberal".

Jade- of course they had a problem. Wright scored a direct hit on THEM- the "stuck on stupid" MSM. He treated them with the contempt they deserve.

Not an argument worth having right now. We need to win. Obama in the White House does more for the cause of the underclass and liberating the oppressed than some pained parsing through Reverend Wright's teachings to find the many good things to hold up to the light.

Let's not have this argument now. Freaking out about Wright either way just prolongs the media frenzy. He should modulate, for now, and the MSM should. The message should be, so what, enough all ready. That's Barack's message on this. The blogosphere would do well to help Barack move on.