How the media synchophants mislead Obama

Richard Cohen:

Some questions: Why did Barack Obama take so long to "reject outright" the harshly critical statements about America made by his minister, Jeremiah Wright, not to mention the praise the same minister lavished on Louis Farrakhan just last November?

How is it possible that Obama did not know about these remarks when he is a member of Wright's congregation and so close to the man that he likens him to "an old uncle"?

How is it possible that a campaign apparatus that sniffed out Geraldine Ferraro's offensive statement to a local California newspaper (The Daily Breeze, 12th paragraph) did not know that Wright's statements condemning America were all over the Internet and had been cited March 6 by the (reputable) anti-Obama columnist Ronald Kessler? The sermon was also available on YouTube.

In other words, how is it possible that a man who has made judgment the centerpiece of his entire presidential campaign has shown so little of it in this matter?

One possible answer to these questions is that Obama has learned to rely on a sycophantic media that hears any criticism of him as either (1) racist, (2) vaguely racist or (3) doing the bidding of Hillary and Bill Clinton. You only have to turn your attention to the interview Obama granted MSNBC's fawning Keith Olbermann for an example. Obama was asked whether he had known that Wright had suggested substituting the phrase "God damn America" for "God bless America."

"You know, frankly, I didn't," Obama said. "I wasn't in church during the time when the statements were made."

But had you heard about them? Did your crack campaign staff alert you? And what about Wright's honoring Farrakhan? Had you heard about that? Did you feel any obligation to denounce those remarks -- not Farrakhan, as you had done, but Wright himself? Don't you consider yourself a public figure that others look to for leadership? Do you think you failed them here?

Olbermann asked none of those questions.

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After I wrote in January about Wright's praise for Farrakhan, I was pilloried by Obama supporters who accused me of all manner of things, including insanity. But when I asked some of them what they would have done if their minister had extolled David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan official, or Rabbi Meir Kahane, the late anti-Arab racist, they either rejected the question entirely or simply didn't answer. Don't they think that everyone, particularly a public figure, has an obligation to denounce bigotry, as well as those who praise the bigots themselves?

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A fawning media is really not the asset it sometimes seems when it overlooks faults that others will eventually point out. It happened to Kerry in 2004 and he never really recovered. Kerry could not really get past the fact that he had called his fellow veterans war criminals and they resented it, but Kerry still believed he was right. Obama may not believe that Wright was right in his racist rants, but he has never had to go on record in challenging those rants before now, and his challenge does not add up in light of his past embrace of the bigot.

James Kirchick writes about the reaction to Cohen's first column on Obama's friends:

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The reaction to Cohen’s column was fierce. Boston College professor Alan Wolfe termed it the “single most despicable op-ed of this century so far.” Many other liberals reacted with similar vitriol, terming the mere questioning of Obama’s relationship with the man who married him, baptized his children, and inspired the title of his book, The Audacity of Hope as a “smear,” a word regularly hurled at those who question Obama’s fitness for office.

Oh, the wonders of television.

On Thursday, ABC News finally got a hold of what surely dozens of news outlets had been looking for: videos of Wright’s sermons. The results are not pretty. Wright doesn’t just epitomize the racial victimization that Obama supposedly transcends; his vision of America is an extreme, racialized version of John Edwards’s already ridiculously overwrought “Two Americas” schtick.

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Up until the last few days these sermons have been setting out there on YouTube so you have to question how hard these outlets had been looking.