John Edwards "They want to shut me up. That's what this is about."

Here is an intense minute and a half from John Edwards in Creston, Iowa, yesterday in which he heatedly tells an audience that the attention to trivia (I assume the reference here is to his haircuts) is "not an accident" and that "they want to shut me up" to silence his message about ending the war and universalizing health care.

He warns, in the video segment posted by his campaign, that if we don't beat back these unnamed oligarchs, "They're going to control the media. They're going to control what's being said."

He doesn't go into detail about who "they" are, other than a reference to people who make $100 million a year, and compares them to the (actual well-funded, conservative) operation that put the Swift Boat ads on air. He also doesn't explain exactly how this corporate-media collaboration works, but his audience seems to be rapt.