The moral inversion of the Obama-Wright defenders
Charles Krauthammer:
...
The revulsion at the Clintons' lack of scruples remained latent as long as the focus was on her relatively unknown opponent, a blank slate being filled in with Tony Rezko's shady dealings and Jeremiah Wright's racist rants. Tuzla not only provided a distraction from Obama's problem with the raving reverend, it created the perfect setting for the press to pronounce the Wright affair closed.
In his swoon-inducing Philadelphia speech, Obama had instructed the nation from on high that America was greatly in need of a national conversation on race -- a need curiously absent before his pastor's words sent his campaign into a tailspin -- and that he, Barack Obama, was ready to lead it. Everything was now on the table, except his association with Wright. Because to "play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election" would simply be a "distraction" from the suffering of the American people which, of course, is the work of the usual suspects: corporate outsourcing and "the special interests in Washington."
This invitation to move on, as it were, has been widely accepted. After the speech it became an article of faith that even referencing Wright's comments was somehow illegitimate, the new "Swift-boating."
It is not just that Obama surrogate Rep. George Miller denounced the Clinton campaign for bringing up Wright when talking to superdelegates as trying to "work the low road." You expect that from a campaign. Or that Andrew Sullivan called Hillary's commenting on Wright "a new low." You expect that from Andrew Sullivan.
But from the mainstream media? As National Review's Byron York has pointed out, when Clinton supporter Lanny Davis said on CNN that it is "legitimate" for her to have remarked "that she personally would not put up with somebody who says that 9/11 are chickens who come home to roost" or the kind of "generic comments (Wright) made about white America," Anderson Cooper, the show's host and alleged moderator, interjected that since "we all know what the (Wright) comments were," he found it "amazing" and "funny" that Davis should "feel the need to repeat them over and over again."
Davis protested, "It's appropriate." Time magazine's Joe Klein promptly smacked Davis down with "Lanny, Lanny, you're spreading the -- you're spreading the poison right now," and then suggested that an "honorable person" would "stay away from this stuff."
Amazing. We've gone beyond moral equivalence to moral inversion. It is now dishonorable to even make note of Wright's bigotry and ask how any man -- let alone a man on the threshold of the presidency -- could associate himself for 20 years with the purveyor of such hate.
Watching such a display, you get a full appreciation of Hillary's challenge. The mainstream media are back in the tank. The "Saturday Night Live" skits parodying media obsequiousness toward Obama, followed closely by the revelation of the Wright tapes, temporarily forced the media to subject Obama to normal scrutiny. But after the "speech" and Tuzla, they have reverted to form as protectors of the myth of Obama.
The hagiographic treatment of a newly emerged Democratic leader is a recurring theme in American journalism. At the dawning of the age of Clinton 15 years ago, the cover of The New York Times Magazine featured a woman dressed entirely in white. The heading read: "Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Politics of Virtue."
Inside, under the title "Saint Hillary," the late Michael Kelly wrote a brilliantly detached, coolly ironic deconstruction of his celestial subject. Saint Obama awaits his Michael Kelly.
The media is doing Obama no favor with this biased coverage. They set Kerry up the same way and they still can't comprehend why the Swift vet message was so effective. They still think it was unfair. They tried to find ways to dismiss it as untrue, when the facts flew in their face. The same thing will happen to Obama and Wright. Wright is so wrong and Obama is so wrong to continue fellowship with people who beleive his message of hate and bigotry and it is not going away.
There have been times when they got away with it such as 1992 when they ignored Clinton's obvious defects and his lying. I don't think this will happen in 2008. Obama is being exposed as something very different from his campaign message. He is also being exposed as a fraudulent demagogue on the war. Leftist may like that message, but McCain is not going to let him get away with that stuff the way Bush has for the last four years.
Posted by Merv
prairiepundit.blogspot.com |
