Well, we knew it was coming.  The Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania has seen fit to launch a last minute Reverend Wright ad to try and scare white people away from Barack Obama.  Once again the naked desperation of the Republican party is evident and the depths to which they will sink boundless.

I'm going to boil this down to quick bullet points:

• Reverend Wright preached at the Trinity United Church of Christ for 36 years and yet all we seem to see in the attack ads is the same few seconds of a couple sermons.  While I'm sure he was full of fire and energy as a preacher, I'm also quite sure it wasn't 36 years of nothing but these few excerpted seconds.
   
• Barack Obama has stated that he was not at the Church when these few seconds of vitriolic sermonizing took place.
   
• Barack Obama has condemned the statements made by Wright, and has subsequently left the church.
   
• Most importantly, Barack Obama is not Reverend Wright -- it's a little ridiculous how Obama is consistently attacked by the Republicans for things other people did or said.

There is more to Barack Obama than who his pastor was, and there is more to Reverend Wright than a few seconds of criticizing the USA.  As far as I am concerned Barack addressed this issue admirably in his speech A More Perfect Union where he discussed how there is fear and distrust on both sides of the racial divide--a divide we need to reach across if we want to progress as a nation.

...The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American...

Joe Biden, known for stumbling over his own words, aptly summed up my feelings on this particular issue of division while speaking at an event in Tallahassee, FL on Sunday:

...We've got to reach out, we've got to end this. Somebody's got to be big enough to stand up and end this...

As far as I'm concerned, Barack Obama has shown he's big enough to stand up and end this.  And this is why we hear about Reverend Wright, but not Pastor Hagee.  It's why we hear about Bill Ayres, but not the Keating Five.

The Obama campaign has been largely a positive one, and I think it is a prelude to a positive presidency--something we sorely need in these times.