First, Obama couldn’t disown him, and now it seems that he can’t run away fast enough from the good reverend.

I know that our Media Glitterati will do what it can to mitigate the damage for their preferred Democratic candidate, but of all the huffing and puffing about Wright’s comments at the National Press Club on Monday, there was one thing the retired pastor from Chicago said that struck me as the most damaging, and that was his characterization of Obama as “he's a politician.”

The context of that phrase had to do with Obama’s Glorious Speech on Race, and the situation the candidate found himself when sound bites of Wright god-damning America were being played like a golden oldies hit. For me, that Glorious Speech was propaganda at its finest: obsfucate the central reason why and focus on other issues certain to distract while pretending these peripheries are the central issue. Got it? With the compliant baby boomers swooning in the media, a potentially damaging issue was diffused. (Well, the right-wing stocked it away for later use.)

Now Wright pops up and appears, rather unrepentant. What to do, what to do? Like I’ve mentioned, I don’t care about the presidential race because no matter who is bleating about changing things, people like the status quo and overwrought leftists will go back to their self-absorbed lives after the election in November. But in the here and now, Wright is a problem and his speechifying isn’t helping Obama out at all. But it’s that damning phrase “he’s a politician” which just keeps ringing in my ears like a clarion bell. Mr. Wright is not a dumb man, and he zeroed in on the Rules of the Political Dance while everyone else is wearing blinders.

That’s right, Obama is a politician. He says and does what he needs to say and do in order to get elected. The Obamatons have just had their massive egos deflated. Their man is a politician trying to get elected, and that means the endless incantation of the word “change” can’t erase that fact, nor can the self-righteous projection of these (seemingly) negative qualities onto Hillary and pretend their man transcends it.

Whatever else is said about Wright, his astute commentary is right on the money. Too bad for the wünderkind, but I’m sure our Media Glitterati will do what it needs to in order to protect him.

As expected, our Media Glitterati have fallen back on their convenient (and comforting) talking point: Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania, but she’s still a loser and needs to get out.

Take a gander at the NY Times, the Washington Times or the ultra-kewl kids at Slate who admit that her victory confounded everybody, but still point out that she’s way behind in delegates and that she still has no chance. Oh, and by the way, they’re all inside her head because they seem to know exactly what her strategy is: win on the popular vote because you know, she’s totally on the outs with superdelegates and they probably won’t return her calls at all.

Well, I’m fascinated by all of this because of what is not said about the democratic process. In seems that liberals—who are in love with the sound of their voice when it comes to big words like “democracy” and “honesty”—are the first the be calling for her to quit. And this mostly because she’s delaying victory for their preferred candidate. Instead of being a contest with clear rules on how many delegates are needed, these folks are furious at Clinton and have resorted to delegate math to insist she drop out, or express their increasing vehemence at her alleged “lust for power.” Now, is this a contest or what? I don’t recall reading anything about the Democratic Party’s rules that a certain number is needed to achieve the nomination, except in cases where it’s not possible because the vote is split down the middle so the candidate with the lower count automatically forfeits.

This is a democracy? These are vaunted ideals that we beat everybody else over the head with?

You know, it’s kinda like when people in another country vote for folks that you find unpalatable and insist that’s not how it should be, so we can all ignore the results. Have any ideas to which I am referring?

As I’ve stated before, I don’t believe Hillary will win the nomination, but I don’t have a personal interest in any candidate. I guess I like her being in the race so I can see and hear insipid media fucks continue to prognosticate. At least they have something to do, since the NY Times disturbing Pentagon story (login required but free) is apparently of no concern and the polygamists in Texas are turning out to be duller than first thought.

At least we can all hate Hillary. Doesn’t that unite everybody?

Okay, here we are after what seems to be the longest lull: the primary in Pennsylvania.

With all the breathless hype of a movie blockbuster, our Media Glitterati have really, truly sworn to us that this will be The Final Conflict and probably the death knell for Hillary Clinton. And just to make sure that she gets the message, the media is full of reports that she needs to win big, double-digit big in order to stay in the race.

You can almost hear the prayers now: please don't let her win, please let us be right. After all, we added in the qualifier of "double-digit lead" didn't we?

Maybe our Media Glitterati is counting on the law of averages: after having declared her dead before a race, and then flooding the airwaves and broadband with delegate math and why she's dead, dead, dead, perhaps they're counting on the standard arithmetic that at some point, she will be out of the race. So, they won't prognosticate (exactly) but they will talk of the impossibility of winning anything other than second place. Throw in lots of stories about her low campaign finances, how Obama out-raises and outspends her, and we've got a winning recipe for failure: she can't deny this logic, right? An added bonus: let's create "Clinton fatigue" and saturate readers with these types of stories so that even Hillary supporters will want to throw in the towel as well.

It often appears that this is less a matchup between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and more a celebrity death match between Hillary and the Media Glitterati. And sometimes, it's almost worth the price of admission.

I am speaking from a position of pure ignorance, which I don't mind doing because I want someone to enlighten me: what is point of the Dalai Lama?

Sure, sure, I'm told he's the spiritual head of Tibet and the of the government-in-exile for that country. A government that not one international body recognizes, I might add in. People flock to him to hear pearls of wisdom that often sound like common sense and act as they've received revelation from the mountaintop. And of course, there's Richard Gere, arguably the world's most famous Buddhist who has helped formed the vanguard of scores of latté liberals who don't even know where Tibet is (or its history, culture and language, but I digress) who take up the cause with flags and bumper stickers -- always the method of expression for tough, committed individuals.

Question is, what has the Dalai Lama actually done for his people? At first I thought he wanted independence for Tibet, but then I read somewhere that he is willing to accommodate the Chinese if they grant autonomy. Okay, fine, whatever, but what actual form of resistance does this man offer, or what political knife does he yield (I'm speaking figuratively here) that can result in relieving the poverty in that country, or the repression?

I often think the world loves the Tibetan cause since the people appear so docile and nice, as opposed to those loudmouth Palestinians who live under occupation and often in squalid conditions, and for about as long as the Tibetans since the Chinese rolled in there last century. Liberals like oppressed people if they're quiet and simpering, not if they're passionate and actively resist injustice and discrimination. And now with the Chinese hosting the 2008 Olympics, it seems everyone is interested in Tibet and the Chinese crackdown there. So much so that tough anti-Chinese crowds are pelting a wheelchair-bound individual trying to carry the Olympic torch. Oh yeah, you read that right: attacking a handicapped individual who probably thought it was a great honor to carry the Olympic flame, politics be damned. Little did he know.

I'm not saying that we should throw out the Tibetans for the sake of the Palestinians, but if you're that committed to justice, you should be applying that kind of pressure to the Israelis themselves and their enablers in Washington. Oppression one place is the same as oppression another place, regardless of the proclivities of Hollywood stars to pick a cause because it's fashionable to do so.

And as for the Dalai Lama? Well, I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government either loathes or fears him that much. He's proven to be rather ineffectual in all his globe-trotting years to secure any kind of freedom for his people. Maybe the Tibetans will just do it for themselves.

Great, now it's official: I'm turning into a watchdog for mainstream media's coverage of Hillary Clinton.

I want to say that I don't care about presidential politics, because no matter how much primping and preening that all politicians do, things will pretty much remain the same on the international front, particularly in the Middle East. No politician in this country has the balls to tell Israel anything, other than asking them if they want a lump sum of their $3 billion in aid this year or not.

But I digress. Once again, watching ABC News I caught an interesting pattern in coverage that includes the Clintons. In talking about the upcoming progress report of General David Petraeus—whose audience will include all three presidential wannabes—ABC ran corresponding clips of McCain, Obama and Clinton. The first two spoke in strong, complete sentences. The third? Well, she made no sense and the reason is that what she did say sounded like a preamble to either a point or a question, but was stopped midway so as seem incomprehensible and not forceful. Not coherent. You know, not presidential enough.

The second instance? In the package covering the death of gun nut Charlton Heston, there was a clip at an NRA convention where Heston specifically makes a nasty crack at then president Bill Clinton (something along the lines of, "If we can't trust our daughters with you, how can we trust you with our guns?") that left me puzzled. What was the purpose of that particular comment? Surely there are dozens of hours of tape with Heston in his activist routine; why choose one that singles out mention of Bill Clinton and in the most negative tone possible?

Hmmm, we've got incomprehensible Hillary and untrustworthy Bill. If I was a paranoid man, I'd say that ABC News is trying to tell me something about these two.

If you need further clues into how the media thinks, all you needed to do was to hear Mark Halperin of "Time" magazine use the most telling phrase in an ABC News segment about the Clintons' tax return: "What did they have to hide?"

He was questioning why it had taken so long for the finances to see the light of day, and it was right then I had a clear view into our Media Glitterati's thoughts on the Clintons and the true origin of the idea that people don't want a "Clinton Restoration" or a return to the 1990s. That's a confusion of what Bill Clinton actually did as president and the media's endless assault in the form or sleazy investigations into every presumed scandal.

Having been neutered by the Bush Administration, I firmly believe that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, all that pent-up resentment at failing to live up to the ideals of the Fourth Estate will come to the fore, in the form of new "scandals" covering Clinton II. When Mr. Halperin used the phrase "what did they have to hide?" you can be assured that this prime example of "framing the debate" will be the guiding principle that our lazy media fucks will follow. That phrase alone sets the tone for the what the media is doing right now and what they will do should Hillary get the nomination and win the presidency. It's an assumption that everything Hillary does has some hidden, sinister meaning, a sign of pathological duplicity or some "lust for power" that the haters in the blogosphere love to claim about her. By starting out with a negative, you're already stacking the deck.

By stark contrast, the media's incredibly light treatment of Barack Obama is almost approaching the legendary: we are no longer talking about his former pastor, his involvement and support of a church with "black liberation theology" at its philosophical and religious core, his Senate record or the claims he puts forward in his book "The Audacity of Hope." His Great Race Speech, as evidenced by the shuddering orgasms of baby boomer assholes in the media has given him enough cover so that it's yesterday's news. The real outrage? The Clintons' tax returns and "what they had to hide."

Like just about every other scandal or revelation about the Clintons, this story will somehow command more attention than it deserves, and all because the Clintons "have something to hide."

Way to go, media fucks. Way to go.

Now, let me ask you: what is the purpose of a state visit to encourage peace between warring parties if the stronger of the two continues to violate agreements in a bid to create facts on the ground?

So it is with Condoleezza Rice’s latest, pointless visit to the Middle East, where she gets to shake hands and have press conferences at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and talk about progress and the viability of an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, blah, blah, blah.

But as she does this, Israel continues its expansion into occupied Palestinian territory, now saying it’s constructing a new 800-unit housing complex around Jerusalem. This is in the same area that Palestinians want to have as the capital of their state. What does Rice say? Well, she doesn’t exert any real pressure on the Israelis but softly tells them to stop. No, please, really, stop. I mean it.

Israel’s expansion of its settlements at a time when it keeps swearing up and down that it wants a peace treaty is utterly ridiculous. No, I’m being polite: it’s a damn lie, one told to the entire world. And Israel can get away it for three reasons: everyone’s attention is diverted to Tibet and America won’t do anything to stop it. That last one is the long-standing, most important one because without America’s support, or soft knuckle-wrapping, Israel wouldn’t try to continue its usurpation of what little Palestinian land remains. These housing units around Jerusalem serve to tighten Israel’s grip around its “eternal capital,” so that eventually it can pull Golda Meir’s line: “There are no Palestinians.” Sure, you evict enough of them, create enough settlements and stuff them with Israeli Jews and then excitedly point out that there’s a population demographic in the Jews’ favor. What a surprise.

At no point will I say that because of this exists the scourge of terrorism: I won’t fall into that little trap. But I will say that it’s because of this the strong sense of injustice exists among Palestinians. And you know what? No one really cares that much. Israel takes more and more land, eases a fraction of the insulting roadblocks that make travel so difficult for Palestinians and considers it progress. Bush can blather on all he wants about having a peace treaty signed by the end of this year, but when this situation is allowed to continue, there ain’t be gonna jack shit. Just a lot less territory for Palestinians to call home, and furrowed brows about why they are so unhappy.