Sellebrity Saturday: Spike Lee on MSNBC. Before Barack and After Barack.

This is a time capsule that contains so many facets worth preserving and reviewing from time to time. It concludes with Spike Lee's holding up a "Down Goes McCain" sweatshirt. So much for Obama's theme of Unity.

There is more. So much more. Anything with Mike Barnicle deserves a stop-the-vid-and-explain moment. Mike Barnicle is an icon of privelege. At "The Boston Globe" he was a serial recycler, a serial fabricator and a serial plagiarist. The trifecta of modern journalism. But he has always landed on his feet because he has always sucked up to the right people. Everything I need to know about the ruling class I learned from Mike Barnicle. It is so appropriate that he was cast in a supporting role in this masterpiece.

But the epicenter of this magnum opus is at 4:18 when Spike Lee divides history into "Before Barack and After Barack." The obvious and sadly sincere comparison is with Christ. Some of us could see the folly of this parallel but even we, the skeptics, did not see immediately see ironic truth of Mr. Lee's statements.

Obama, for all of his obvious shortcomings, might well be a pivotal character in US and world history. Obama might represent the excess of corruption and greed and powerlust and privelege that pivots America in a new direction. Maybe he represents the end of an era where elitism and cronyism and insiderism rule the day. Maybe he represents the end of media-sanctioned secretivity. Maybe he represents the end of desructive economics. Of sanctioned anti-Americanism. Maybe Obama embodies the overkill that prompts a long-term "enough is enough" response.

Maybe.

SPIKE SAYS A MOUTHFUL