Rev. Wright has multiple reasons to do it:
1. Spite: Obama dumped him at the last moment from his big spot on national TV giving the invocation at Obama's kickoff rally in Springfield last winter.
2. Glory: Wright craves attention the way Britney Spears does.
3. Ideology: Wright despises the idea that whites would give a black man like Obama an even break. As he told Obama when they first met (p. 283 of Obama's Dreams From My Father
"Cops don't check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car. These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago [William Julius Wilson], talking about 'the declining significance of race.' Now, what country is he living in?"Here's the timeline:
Reverend Wright's amour propre was wounded by Obama dumping him at the last moment from giving the invocation at Obama's nationally televised campaign kickoff last winter in Springfield.
He soon after boasted to the NYT about how when word got out about his trip with Farrakhan to Libya in 1984 was going to eventually cost Obama all his Jewish support.
But, word didn't much get out. The whole Wright story pretty much got shoved down the media memory hole as too hot to handle in these sensitive times.
So, Wright posted on the web a long open letter to the NYT denouncing the NYT for, well, for quoting him correctly.
That didn't make much of a ripple either, so then the Wrights went back to the Farrakhan Well again by giving him their grand prize at a big bash at the Chicago Hyatt Regency on November 2, 2007. Two days later they posted their video tribute to Farrakhan on Youtube.
The media still wouldn't touch that either for two months, but eventually it came out and Wright is now getting the attention he feels he deserves.
If this story gets buried again, Wright is going to keep pulling stunts like this. If he keeps to the same schedule for his annual fund-raising gala, it will be the Friday night before Election Day 2008. Who will he give his lifetime achievement award to this time? Col. Gadaffi? Ahmadinejad? O.J. Simpson? Willie Horton?
Perhaps he wants to turn himself into the Willie Horton of 2008, and his name goes down in history associated with the conventional wisdom about how white racism kept the Democrats from winning in 2008.
I bet that Wright doesn't want Obama to win—that would disprove his whole world view that whites will never give a black man an even break. He wants Obama to go down in flames to prove he was right, and he wants to be the torch. Just as the conventional wisdom has become that white racism cost Michael Dukakis the Presidency in 1988 over Willie Horton, he wants to go down in history in conjunction with the next myth—that white racism cost Obama the Presidency or Vice-Presidency over Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
