N&O's bogus claim re: Enquirer's Edwards story

Raleigh News & Observer executive editor John Drescher's two most recent columns (here and here) have offered excuses for what journalists and many N&O readers know was the N&O bungled coverage of the Edwards scandal, a major political story much of which played out on the N&O's doorstep.

As late as Aug. 3 the N&O's public editor Ted Vaden praised what he termed the N&O's "restraint" and "refusal" to chase "salacious details" such as Rielle Hunter's child's birth certificate. He quoted Drescher: "I don't view the National Enquirer as a credible source of news."

Then came Aug. 8, the day Edwards admitted on ABC's Nightline to an affair with Rielle Hunter and, as the National Enquirer reported July 22, their Beverly Hilton tryst the night of July 21.

Edwards' disclosures were soon followed by Drescher's disclosures the N&O's coverage had actually been "aggressive" but made difficult by Edwards' refusal to help the N&O.

Well, sure.

Now let's look at what the N&O was reporting the morning of Aug. 8.

In a page one story, “Tabloid photo offers no clarity,” which carried N&O reporter Lorenzo Perez’s byline, readers were told:

… Two weeks after it ran an anonymously sourced story asserting that its reporters caught Edwards visiting a former campaign worker and the baby he fathered with her, the Enquirer posted the photo on its Web site to bolster its reporting of the story. … (emphasis added)

The N&O was just plain wrong when it said the Enquirer's July 22 story was "anonymously sourced."

Two Enquirer reporters – Alan Butterfield and Alexander Hitchen – were named in the Enquirer story which included detailed accounts of what they saw and did at the Beverly Hilton the night of July 21/22. Afterward, the reporters swore out criminal complaints alleging hotel security had roughed them up.

By Aug. 8 Butterfield and Hitchen had been interviewed many times by news organizations. They stood by everything they’d said in their July 22 report.

Up to the time of the N&O's Aug. 8 "anonymously sourced" claim not John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Bob McGovern, who the NE reported drove Hunter to the Beverly Hilton nor any hotel staff member had disputed anything Butterfield and Hitchen reported, unless you count Edwards’ “tabloid trash” remark July 23 in Houston.

The N&O claims to fact-check everything that appears in its news columns under its reporters' bylines.

If that's the case, how did the N&O blunder by declaring the Enquirer's story was “anonymously sourced ” more than two weeks after it was published and just hours before Edwards’ Nightline appearance?

Perez was supposed to get his story right in the first place.

The editor who assigned him to the story was supposed to fact-check it.

At the N&O copy, layout, and headline editors are responsible for fact-checking stories they work on.

When a story's being considered for the front page, the N&O's front page editor, Stever Merelman, or his designee editor gets involved.

Also, one or more of the N&O three senior editors and Drescher himself are almost always involved with selecting and fact-checking front page stories.

It's hard to understand how a reporter and a group of editors could report on Aug. 8 on the N&O's front page that the Enquirer's story was "anonymously sourced."

Wasn't anyone minding the newsroom?

The Churchill Series – Aug. 18, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Something out of the ordinary today.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, Churchill sent Roosevelt a message.

What follows are links to two documents housed in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park, N. Y.

The first link is to a memorandum on official stationary prepared for Secretary of State Cordull Hull’s approval and initials. It’s addressed to FDR and suggests he consider the proposed accompanying draft response to Churchill’s message.

The second link is to the draft response on plain paper which FDR’s signature “Roosevelt” indicates he approved without change.

I thought you might find a look at the two documents interesting with their penciled routing notes interesting.

Tomorrow let’s go to Blenheim Palace. We’ll visit the very morning Winston proposes to Clementine.

Team Obama concedes Saddleback defeat

It wasn’t gracious, but unless you sing in the Obama’s Come to Save Us Choir you know it was a concession of defeat.

From USA Today:

"Absolutely a lie, absolutely a lie."

So says Rev. Rick Warren about any suggestion that there was a TV or other monitoring equipment in the "green room" where Republican presidential candidate John McCain was waiting Saturday evening for his turn to go on stage for the pastor's "Civil Forum on the Presidency."

Warren talked to Beliefnet.com's God-o-Meter blog.

As we noted earlier, the McCain campaign strongly protested after NBC News' Andrea Mitchell said on the air yesterday that some aides to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama thought that McCain might have been able to listen as Obama and Warren were talking during the first half of the forum. McCain was supposed to be -- as Warren said when he opened the program Saturday -- in a "cone of silence."

Later, it became known that McCain hadn't yet arrived at Saddleback Church when the Obama-Warren part of the forum began. The GOP senator was in a motorcade on his way there. His aides have said he did not listen to start of the session while en route.

The entire USA Today post is here.

Hat tip: Danvers

Williams today on Campaign ‘08

Mike’s letter today is outstanding.

He begins - - -

You’ll probably know by now that McCain and Obama participated in a sort-of debate in California at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church this past weekend, ostensibly wooing evangelicals. John in Carolina channels one pundit’s take here.

The starboard side bloggers appear generally very happy with McCain’s performance, while the port siders seem a little panicked by Obama’s. So do some of Obama’s MSM enablers.

At least we look to be getting at the ground truth on Obama’s misstatements about infanticide and born-alive abortions.

Also, we can continue to be confident that Obama – whenever he senses rocks and shoals on the issues – will still navigate towards racism and elitism, albeit with more subtlety than he’s displayed in the past. Oops, maybe not.

In other news, Musharraf has resigned as President of Pakistan. Rick Moran at American Thinker:

In retrospect - which always allows for 20-20 vision - we probably should have insisted on a return to civilian rule years earlier. But there were concerns that the Pakistani secular parties would want no part of our war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

In the end, this became a self fulfilling prophecy as the new government has sought accommodation with the Taliban rather than war - with mixed results. It remains to be seen whether we will be forced by circumstances to go into Pakistan ourselves and clear out the Taliban infestation.

Such a move would be disastrous for our relations with the Pakistani government but may become necessary if they cannot control their own borders.

Our complex, frustrating, and ultimately failed relationship with Musharraf is the kind of thing that happens in war. No good solutions to nearly insoluble problems doomed it from the start.

Speaking of 20-20 hindsight, let’s end it for today with this interesting Jeff Jacoby column. It starts off:

IT WASN'T so long ago that erstwhile supporters of the war in Iraq were invoking hindsight to justify their newfound opposition to it. "Obviously if we knew then what we know now," Senator Hillary Clinton said in December 2006, when asked whether she regretted her 2002 vote authorizing military action, "I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."

Many of Clinton's colleagues said the same thing. An ABC News survey of senators in January 2007 found that "an overwhelming number" of Democrats who had voted in favor of going to war - including Joe Biden of Delaware, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, John Breaux of Louisiana, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia - had had a change of heart.

Liberals and Democrats weren't the only ones going wobbly. "If I had known then what I know now about the weapons of mass destruction," Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, told the Houston Chronicle, "I would not vote to go into Iraq."

The conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg pronounced the Iraq war "a mistake by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq." Others singing from the same hymnal have included Jonathan Rauch, National Journal's respected semi-libertarian essayist, and (somewhat earlier) Michael Howard, the former leader of the British Conservative Party.

The prevailing wisdom 18 months or so ago was that invading Iraq had been, in retrospect, a disastrous blunder. It had led to appalling sectarian fratricide and an ever-climbing body count. Iraqi democracy was deemed a naive pipe dream.

Worst of all, it was said, the fighting in Iraq wasn't advancing the global struggle against Islamist terrorism; by rallying a new generation of jihadists, it was actually impeding it.

Opponents of the war clamored loudly for pulling the plug - even if that meant, as The New York Times acknowledged in a bring-the-troops-home-now editorial last July, "that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave."

But what if we had known then what we know now? ….

Saddleback : a smart pundit’s take

Janet Daley writes for the Daily Telegraph, often on the American political scene. She’s smart, lucid, and independent.

About a year ago, when Sen. Clinton appeared the inevitable Dem nominee and everyone was wondering whether Sen. McCain could keep his campaign going for another month or two, Daley analyzed our presidential nomination process and the two parties’ candidates.

Her conclusions: She assured her readers the nominees would be Sens. McCain and Obama.

Her column today offers her take on Saddleback. IMO it’s accurate, insightful, and the best analysis I’ve read of what happened at Saddleback and why.

Excerpts for Daley's column - - -

Last Saturday night, the two contenders appeared on a platform together for the first time - not to engage in a formal presidential debate which would have been improper since neither has been formally nominated as yet, but to participate in a novel format staged by the Saddleback Church, one of the largest evangelical congregations in America.

Saddleback is a moderate outfit and its pastor, Reverend Rick Warren, is a famously benign and tolerant figure. He called his event a "civil forum" and stated specifically that his intention in chairing it was to restore civility to political discourse. He was scrupulously fair and courteous to both presumptive candidates, to whom he put the identical questions in separate interviews (out of each other's hearing).

It was, as the commentator Charles Krauthammer said afterwards, a brilliant "controlled experiment" in which both men were subjected to identical examinations in identical conditions. I stayed up to watch the whole two hours of it between 1am and 3am. It was as illuminating as any political event I have ever witnessed.

Mr Obama came first. He was, as we have come to expect, articulate, engaging and very relaxed ("comfortable in his skin", as is often said). He responded with charm if some ambiguousness to the tricky questions that arose on the evangelical heartland issues, most notably abortion, on which he is pro-choice.

But the most interesting aspects of his performance (especially in retrospect when we had heard McCain) lay in what he did not say.

Asked whether he thought that evil existed and, if so, what should be done about it, he replied that it did and that we had to confront it "on our streets". The only international reference that he made in this answer was to Darfur. There was no mention of al-Qaeda, Russia or Georgia.

In another answer, he described the most significant moral failing of the United States as not getting to grips with domestic poverty, racism and sexism.

Asked to define the "rich" whom he has said should pay more tax so that government can improve society, he offered a figure of $250,000 a year. His performance was attractive and fluent in its own terms.

But within moments of McCain appearing to face the same queries, the Obama poise looked positively laconic and the Obama answers insubstantial. Where he had glided through the session with glib personableness, McCain electrified the hall. His answers were direct, detailed and full of the personal anecdote that his life experience has to offer.

Asked the question about evil, he cited al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism. (He would, he said, pursue Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell if necessary.)

America had a moral obligation to defeat genocide wherever it occurred, and he was "very saddened by Russia's re-emergence as an empire". Georgia had achieved democracy and deserved our support.

On the definition of "rich", he said that he did not want to raise taxes for anyone in tough economic times. He made it clear, too, that he supported education vouchers to allow poor children greater opportunity.

Both men answered the question, "What is worth risking lives for?", with the word "freedom", but it was McCain whose memories gave it force.

Ironically, the man whose age is thought to be a liability seemed more energetic and robust than his rival, whose cool sophistication looked somehow inappropriate for the times.

Daley’s entire column’s here.

America's God-given Obama

At Politico:

A confident Barack Obama raised an extraordinary $7.8 million Sunday at three California fundraisers, most if it in large checks to a Democratic Party committee.

“I will win. Don’t worry about that,” he said to the crowd of about 1,300 at his third event of the evening, according to the pool report.

He was warmly received by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called him "a leader that God has blessed us with at this time."

The entire Politico post's here.

Pelosi's statement explains a lot.

No wonder Sen. Obama comes across as arrogant.

How can you be humble when you're God's choice for President? It's not easy.

All those mega-millions rolling in to his campaign coffers? They're jumping at the chance to back God's candidate.

Still, I can't help thinking that had a top Republican said Sen. McCain was "a leader that God has blessed us with at this time," we'd be hearing loud cries about bringing religion into the campaign and breaking down a wall that should separate church and state.

The old double standard

Europeans and the Olympics: a few thoughts

Victor Davis Hanson at Pajamas Media today with my comments below the star line.

Davis begins - - -

Obama, like Socrates, announced in Berlin that he was a citizen of the world. We see many such citizens at the Olympics, but I am not sure I would wish to be counted among them.

There were the Chinese hosts, staging a Triumph of Will-like opening ceremony with Red Army soldiers, and computer-enhanced, Cecil B. DeMille backdrops. Tiny girls, some apparently with their baby teeth, were passed off as 15-year olds in the gymnastic competitions. A Newsweek or Time was not about to do an expose such a gargantuan Olympian fraud—not when journalists were muzzled or deported.

The utopian Europeans were, well, Europeans, eager to point out the pimple on the American nose, blind to the wart on their own. So the Spanish posed in group portraits with fingers pulling at their eyes, mimicking the Asian look of their Chinese hosts—just the sort of racism that they usually allege boorish Americans engage in.

Fast forward to beach volleyball. The Swiss duo, defeated by the Americans, were classic poor sports—Jan Schnider alternately whining, pouting, and bragging in the worst sort of showmanship. The French swimmers boasted, in empty fashion, of the defeat to come of the Phelps and the Americans. And so on. If we sometimes imagine that collective European utopianism and sermonizing are psychological recompense for rather self-indulgent, self-absorbed private lives, no better window exists on that than at the Olympics.

**************************************************************

Comments:

I’m going to focus on what Hanson says about Europeans because I know them much better than I do the Chinese.

I’ll start with what many of you are already thinking: Hanson’s over-generalizing about Europeans.

They’re a very diverse lot just as Americans are: the mature, the gracious, the brave, the silly, the selfish – you’ll find them on both sides of the pond.

Yes, some European athletes have behaved in boorish and petulant ways, but most have conducted themselves as they should.

I wouldn’t paint the French or Swiss teams with a broad brush that ought to strip only a few of their members.

What about the Spanish basketball team’s posing for a group photo pulling at their eye folds to create a slant-eyed look?

Crude! They deserve public ridicule.

But based on a few calls I’ve made to journalists at European papers and searching some Europe-based English and French language blogs, that’s not happening.

You know there’d be uproar in Europe if an American team did that. What’s more, they’d be an uproar here, too.

Final thought: I’m delighted to see the Brits doing so well.

Wash. Post’s Colbert King’s question: my response

Here are excerpts from the Washington Post’s Colbert King’s column today followed by my response below the star line

King begins - - -

Say you find yourself seated on the train behind two white supremacists who are beside themselves over the possibility that Barack Obama could become America's first black president.

They are so fired up, they fail to notice you.

The men are discussing the urgent need to derail Obama's candidacy.

The obvious strategist of the two says that Obama's defeat can be brought about by hitting him hard, where it hurts the most.

We've got to launch an attack, he declares, on Obama's "lack of American roots." Paint him as a guy with an exotic background who's present in mainstream society but isn't really a part of it. ...

The other white supremacist, getting the point, chimes in: Yeah, and because Obama's black, let's put up a candidate against him to "contest the black vote at every opportunity. Keep him pinned down there."

We must, the men agree, keep charging that Obama is not steeped in "basic American values."

That, dear reader, is the way virulent hate purveyors will seek to bring down Barack Obama: by portraying him as un-American and, oh yes, "unelectable."

To be fair, these anti-Obama sentiments cannot be attributed to two white supremacists riding on a train.

The words quoted above belong to Mark Penn, the top Democratic strategist and pollster for most of Hillary Clinton's run for the White House. They appear in a strategic campaign review memo, unearthed recently by the Atlantic magazine, that Penn sent to Clinton on March 19, 2007. …

Let us note that Hillary Clinton did not take Penn's advice, though she continues her association with him.

He's a longtime Clinton insider, the chief executive of the public relations giant Burson-Marsteller and an adviser to Fortune 500 chieftains. He's accorded respectability, access to the powerful and a fat bank account.

We have, thanks to Penn's own hand, a glimpse into his ethics and values. We can see how he would exploit heritage, background and class and use misleading and offensive characterizations in his work. We understand how he would go about challenging and demeaning Obama's American identity by suggesting that the Hawaii-born, Columbia- and Harvard-educated U.S. senator from Illinois is not American enough.

Cynically, he would make Obama out to be a threat to American values and culture. ...

It's fair to ask about his roots in basic American values. Why do business with him?

King’s entire column's here.

*********************************************************************

I've sent King the following electronic letter.

Dear Mr. King:

Why do business with Mark Penn?

I’ll bet it’s for the same reasons salons of Washington, the boardrooms of corporate America, foreign governments, our mainstream media and at least the Democratic Party have all done business for years with Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I’ll bet it’s for the same reasons Sen. and Mrs. Obama did business with unsavory people in Chicago, befriended and sought the support of known terrorists such as Bill Ayes, and attended a church for 20 years knowing the pastor was a virulent racist who regularly delivered vile anti-American screeds from the pulpit.

Remember “God damn America” and “KKK – America?” And much worse?

Yet the Obama’s brought their children to Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for religious instruction.

Now I want to ask you a few questions.

How can millions of Americans who want to know why the Obama’s attended Wright’s church for 20 years and generously supported him with financial offerings get answers to those questions without being called racist?

Is just asking the Obamas to answer those questions itself a form of racism?

And did you publish anything when leading Democrats and Obama supporters such as Sens. Harkin and Rockefeller and Gen. Clark claimed Sen. McCain’s military service to our country made him less fit to be President?

I’ll publish your response in full at my blog.

Thank you for your attention to this letter.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

Char. Observer's Hunter's baby's birth certificate reporting

The Raleigh N&O didn't lead on the locating and publication of the birth certificate of the baby born to Rielle Hunter's and a father so far unnamed on the birth certificate. The Charlotte Observer did that.

Yesterday I posted Raleigh N&O and Charlotte Observer Edwards coverage in which I said that and linked to a number of sources where that could all be confirmed.

Never the less, I'm hearing from people insisting N&O reporter Lorenzo Perez is responsible for locating the birth certificate; and that the N&O lead in publishing it.

Here's an example:

[Raleigh N&O reporter] Lorenzo Perez has a byline on the birth certificate story. He works for the N&O. You keep saying the charlotte o wrote that story. Clearly you have an error. I look forward to seeing your correction and apology on this blog.

My response:

At Charlotte Observer.com with a date of 7/31 Commenter and others will find:

"Birth certificate for Rielle Hunter's child lists no father
Former aide to John Edwards had claimed paternity in December"

By Lisa Zagaroli
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted: Thursday, Jul. 31, 2008

The birth certificate of a child who a tabloid newspaper claims is linked to former Sen. John Edwards doesn't identify a father.

The certificate, obtained by The Charlotte Observer today, shows Frances Quinn Hunter was born Feb. 27, more than two months after an Edwards aide claimed to be the father. Andrew Young, a former Edwards campaign finance director, claimed paternity in a statement from his lawyer posted at the political blog mydd.com. (emphasis added) …

The rest of Zagaroli's Observer story’s here. It's accompanied by a photocopy of the birth certificate.


The Columbia Journalism Review’s Clint Hendler credits the Observer’s Zagaroli with reporting on the birth certificate. He doesn’t even mention Perez.

And Drescher himself, in his Aug. 13 column touting what he called the N&O’s “aggressive” Edwards scandal coverage, doesn’t claim Perez had anything to do with locating and reporting on the birth certificate.

Drescher knew the McClatchy wire had carried a story headed, bylined, dated and beginning, all as follows:

No dad listed for child in tab reports

News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC)
News B4
Lisa Zagaroli
Lorenzo Perez Mcclatchy Newspapers

Published: August 1, 2008

The birth certificate of a child whom a tabloid newspaper has linked to former Sen. John Edwards doesn't identify a father.

The certificate, obtained by The Charlotte Observer on Thursday, shows that Frances Quinn Hunter was born Feb. 27, more than two months after an Edwards aide claimed to be the father. Andrew Young, a former Edwards campaign finance director, claimed paternity in a statement from his lawyer posted at the political blog mydd.com. (emphasis added)

The girl was born at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif., to Rielle Jaya James Druck, also known as Rielle Hunter. Hunter, 44, was a videographer on Edwards' presidential campaign last year. …

The rest of the story from the McClatchy wire is here.

Bylines are extremely important in journalism. Reporters fight to have their names bylined because it indicates the story reflects their work. Individual newspapers and wire services add their names to bylines to let each other and readers know they are responsible for a story’s content and publication.

In the Observer story, Zagaroli got an individual byline because she and the Observer had located and published the birth certificate.

In the McClatchy wire service story, Zagaroli is listed ahead of Perez. The wire story leads with text straight from Zagaroli’s story and clearly states the Observer located and published the birth certificate.

Perez is bylined second on the McClatchy wire story but no claim is made he or the N&O had anything to do with locating it or first publishing the birth certificate.

If you remove from the wire service story the text that appeared in Zagaroli’s Observer story concerning the birth certificate, what's left is what journalists sometimes call background filler.

I don’t doubt the N&O’s Perez contributed to the filler.

Well there you are, folks.

I’m confident the documentation and discussion I’ve provided here will assure the fair-mined among you that I work to document the facts I present.

I do sometimes make factual mistakes but I'm quick to acknowledge and correct them as Regulars saw when ABC News’ Martha Raddatz called my MCain-54 mistake to my attention.

The commenter, likely a troll, who prompted this post can have the last word here, although I’ll use the comment again later today in another post:

[Raleigh N&O reporter] Lorenzo Perez has a byline on the birth certificate story. He works for the N&O. You keep saying the charlotte o wrote that story. Clearly you have an error. I look forward to seeing your correction and apology on this blog.

Georgia, & Campaign '08 including Obama's response to Corsi

Here’s Mike Williams letter today. The whole thing is first-rate right down to the “teensy little detail” Mike mentions at the end.

Mike begins - - -

Ed Morrissey has the dope on the latest truce agreement between Russia and Georgia (which Secretary of State Rice sponsored) here. It replaces what Ed calls “the Sarkozy cease-fire, which turned out to be little more than a surrender foisted on [Georgia President] Saakashvili.”

Over at American Thinker, Patrick Casey believes the backlash against Russia has already begun:

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said yesterday in his press conference (video can be found here, transcript can be found here), Russia's actions in Georgia will result in our allies, especially those in the Russian power sphere that Putin is trying to re-establish, quickly moving towards closer relations with us on all levels, including militarily.

The first manifestation of that occurred last night. USA Today reported that Poland has finally agreed to a missile defense compact with the United States, something that Putin furiously opposed….

Victor Davis Hanson elaborates:

We are a little more than a week into the crisis, and already Russia has already gotten itself more than just fights with Georgia—but also issued creepy threats to Poland over missiles, and to the Ukraine over naval bases. Putin has galvanized into panic most of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, prompted a radical change of policy in the United States, and embarrassed its once sure support from the appeasement bloc of the European Union. What will next week bring? A Georgian insurgency, replete with stingers, anti-tank guns, and ieds? Increased arms sales to the former republics? Tougher talk from Obama….

You can read about the “creepy threats to Poland” here. As Hanson says, patience. Getting inside Putin’s gambit, maneuvering him into “unforced” errors, and then putting the hammer down on things like Russia’s membership in the G-8 will pay dividends in the long run.

In Campaign 2008 news, Jerome Corsi has a new book out -- The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. You may remember Corsi as co-author of Unfit for Command, which was also a NYT best-seller. Professor Ann Althouse discusses The Obama Nation here.

Meanwhile, Obama’s local MSM enabler, The N&O, is decidedly worried:

It makes sense for Sen. Barack Obama to slug it out with Jerome Corsi, whose new book paints the presumptive Democratic nominee as a dangerous radical, analysts said Friday.

But Obama's strategy also carries some risks.

"The old saying is that when you get in the gutter, everybody gets dirty," said Kevin Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, particularly with information flying across the Internet….

What The N&O neglects to tell its readers is that some charges in Unfit for Command were demonstrably true (e.g., Christmas in Cambodia), and that John Kerry never did the one thing completely within his power to lay to rest the less clear-cut allegations – release all his military records to the public as he promised he would.

So Obama’s got real problems here. His long associations with Jeremiah Wright and unrepentant Weather Undergrounders Bernadine Dhorn and William Ayers, plus his wife Michelle’s well-documented America-bashing, demand a solidly factual rebuttal that – just like John Kerry before him – he probably can’t or won’t deliver.

Let’s give Jeff Emanuel at RedState the last word for today:

As my friend and colleague Streiff detailed Friday morning, the Obama campaign was apparently so spooked by the case Jerome Corsi makes against The One in his book "Obama Nation" that they released a 40 page rebuttal to the work.

Streiff wrote:

Even if everything in Corsi's book is correct, it certainly isn't something that a politician who sees himself as less than a deity, if not The Deity, should concern himself with. His 40-page rebuttal provides a good reminder of the immensely flawed character of Obama, himself, rather than addressing any substantive issue.

That a major newspaper would take up the cudgel on Obama's behalf, especially given its shameful cooperation with various smear books directed against President Bush, indicates that Corsi has found a chink in Obama's carefully crafted persona and if they don't silence Corsi, Obama is finished.

In fact, the Obama Nation was in such a hurry to issue their rebuttal to Corsi's book that they appear to have employed their characteristic bypassing of any detail-or-fact-checking in the process (or, perhaps equally likely, they simply thought reality would shift to match whatever they published in their shoolyard retort-level response to the book).

As Jake Tapper points out:

[T]he Obama campaign got a little greedy in their refutations.

First of all, on the front of the response, is a labeled stamped “Brought to you by Bush/Cheney Attack Machine.”

Corsi has actually called for the impeachment of President Bush. Corsi’s a 9/11 Truther who thinks the Bush administration is covering up what “really” happened at the World Trade Center. It’s not fair to blame this nasty screed on the President.

Never mind that teensy little detail, though. After all, it interferes with the Obamans' Reality™ -- and we all know how desperately they want to believe they control that.

Reader rebukes Saunders, N&O

Raleigh News & Observer news columnist Barry Saunders' Aug. 5 column asked: “ Hey, Chief. Was it something I said?”

Saunders began - - -

For the past several months, Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez has treated me as countless exes have -- refusing to acknowledge my calls and in general treating me as though I'd tracked something nasty in on his new carpet.

What gives, yo?

Oh yeah: Chief Lopez apparently took issue with a nickname I tagged him with in January when he refused to talk to The N&O's reporters or give information about crimes in a timely manner.

In retrospect, the nickname was a low blow -- but funny. But being the man that I am, I called, invited him to a tete-a-tete and left numerous apologetic messages at his office and his home. (At a decent hour I left messages, mind you, since the chief famously scolded one of our reporters for calling him at home at 8 p.m. after police had shot and killed a fleeing home-invader downtown.)

Crime, I informed him then, is not a 9-to-5 vocation, and criminals aren't likely to time their activities to his convenience. …

There’s more before Saunders closes with:

Chief Lopez and his public no-information officer need to understand one thing: When we call or try to contact them, it's not because of their scintillating wit or charm. We're calling for information to share with citizens, their employers.

Me? I'd rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log -- or listen to Kenny G at my dentist's office while receiving a root canal without anesthesia -- than chase after them for comment. It's part of our job to ask, though, and part of their job to inform the public about which dangerous dudes are lurking about.

If y'all would turn the page now, I'd like to say a few words in private to the chief, since this is apparently the closest I'll get to a private chat with him (unless I can accidentally run into him on purpose tonight during the annual National Night Out against crime):

Chief, let's put this little misunderstanding behind us and act professionally. Your petulance is unbecoming. It dishonors the fine officers in your department, and it doesn't help Bull City residents.

Call a brother; let's chat. I promise I won't call you anything but Chief.

Saunders' entire column's here.

Saunders' self-excusing and invocation of the “I speak for the people” trope drew the following letter published in the Aug. 15 N&O:

Regarding Barry Saunders' Aug. 5 column "Chief, call me; let's talk":
I could not help writing to comment on Saunders' snarky column about his problems obtaining information from the Durham Police Department. As a former law enforcement officer and government public affairs representative, my considered opinion is that Saunders' problems are self-inflicted.

How could anyone with the serious responsibility of protecting the public take seriously Saunders' query about how the clothing adolescents are wearing affects police officers? It's a waste of the valuable taxpayer-funded time of a public employee to respond to that kind of silliness.

Saunders needs to come down off his ego-inflated cloud. A good reporter would know how to get information without attempting to bully people in print, as Saunders has attempted.

A good reporter would not ask silly questions that would waste the time of people who have serious public business to carry out, or in this case, try to create news where there is none. A good editor would tell him that.

Robert Porreca

A big hat tip to Robert Porreca.

I left the following comment on the thread of Saunders’ column:

Barry,

You were a cheerleader for the Duke hoax and DPD's libeling of the lacrosse players.

You supported Dep. Chief Hodge, who supervised the "investigation" for the Chief's job.

You threatened to go to city hall and slap people if the city settled with the students who were the targets of the frame-up attempt.

Do you think, Barry, the Chief might think his time is better spent with serious journalists?

John in Carolina

The Churchill Series – Aug. 15, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill)

Let’s end the week with something to smile about.

We find it in Frank Smyth’s 1988/9 International Churchill Society introduction of Churchill’s youngest daughter, Lady Mary Soames, who spoke at a Society dinner in Vancouver, B. C.

Our Toastmaster this evening is Mr. Derek Lukin Johnston, who if I may add has, with his wife Diana, just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Derek was kind enough to provide me with an excerpt from a new book, Memories and Adventures, by Winston S. Churchill, M.P., Sir Winston's grandson and Lady Soames' nephew.

Describing his thrill at visiting Hyde Park and viewing the ruins of buildings and the fire engines, he writes: ". . . but best of all were the visits I paid to my Aunt Mary (later Lady Soames) at the heavy anti-aircraft battery in the park near Marble Arch, where, aged twenty-one, she was one of the ATS officers commanding the guns.

To a three year old, having a grandfather who was Prime Minister and running the entire war was a concept difficult to grasp, though I knew he was very important by the way he bossed about all those Generals who were constantly in attendance in their smart uniforms. But to have an aunt who had four huge guns of her very own - that was something. "

If you’re following the Olympics, I hope you’re enjoying them.

Whatever the case, I hope you have a very nice weekend.

John
_______________________________________________________________
You’ll find Smyth’s entire introduction here hosted by the Churchill Centre, which also provides on the same page as Smyth's introduction a link to Lady Soames speech.

Remember those Reagan ads in '84?

If you do, this McCain ad will strike a memory chord. But it's also fresh.

That's my opinion. What's yours?



Hat tip: AC

Raleigh N&O and Charlotte Observer Edwards coverage

Yesterday I posted An Edwards Story Lesson: Use the Elephant. It contained journalist Bob Wilson’s column examining the different approaches the Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer took to the National Enquirer’s expose of John Edwards’ long-running affair with his former campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

The short of Bob’s column: N&O executive editor John Drescher's out of hand dismissal of the NE's expose helps explain why the N&O was so late and anemic reporting a major political story it should have owned. On the other hand, Observer editor Rick Thames decided to check out what the NE reported. His decision led to a number of major Observer stories which pushed the scandal beyond the new media and on to the front pages of America’s newspapers.

Be sure to read Bob’s column if you haven’t already.

Every fact stated in the column checks out. But not minding that, an Anon@6:31 made the following comment:

The N&O political team and the Charlotte Observer's political team sit in the exact same room. You're drawing distinctions between the two newspapers that simply no longer exist. John, I thought you made a commitment to fact check items posted on your blog.

Shortly thereafter, another Anon responded directly to Anon@6:31:

Iran and the U.S. sit in the exact same room at the U.N.

Did you ever hear of sharing an office?

The Observer reporters did what they did; the N&O reporters didn't do much.

Drescher says he sent a reporter to Santa Barbara, but the reporter got chased off by deputies as he approached one of the houses Edwards' "party members" were staying in.

NC to Cal is a long way to go to ring a bell.

The N&O just got beat as Bob says on a story they should have owned.

Journalists know that.

I thank the second Anon for providing a very good example of “the corrective power of the Net.”

I encourage anyone doubting whether the Charlotte Observer beat the pants off the Raleigh N&O on the Edwards Scandal story to do the following:

1) Read Clint Hendler’s American Journalism Review online article,” North Carolina Paper Covers the John Edwards Allegations – Carefully.” It’s a detailed, link-rich account of the Charlotte Observer's actions to report on the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair story while, as Bob document, the N&O’s public editor Ted Vaden was praising his papers restrained approach to the Edwards story and fretting over an invasion of Edwards privacy.

I'm not kidding about what Vaden said. It's all in his Aug. 3 column I've just linked to.

2) Read Observer reporter Jim Morrill’s 7/24 post hosted at Observer.com and Observer reporter Mark Johnson’s 8/7 story. Both reporters checked out the NE report and then advanced the story.

Meanwhile, what did you read at the N&O Under the Dome political blog about the N&O’s “hometown” candidate and when did the N&O first post it?

3) By all means read N&O executive editor John Drescher's rare mid-week column which IMO just excused and fogged over the N&O's Edwards reporting failures. Example from the column:

...We sent an N&O reporter to California to confirm the confrontation and to interview Young and Hunter, who were living separately in Santa Barbara. We were unable to confirm the confrontation or to interview Hunter or Young. At one point, our Lorenzo Perez was chased out of Young's neighborhood by sheriff's deputies....

That what the second Anon was talking about when h/she said the reporter had been sent a long way to ring a bell.

4) Take a look at this post - The N&O finally touches the Edwards affair story - sorta - if after reading the items cited in 1, 2, and 3 you are still not convinced the N&O's Edwards Scandal reporting was late and anemic.

Congratulations and thanks are due Observer editor Rick Thames and his reporters and editors who worked on the story.

It's a shame Drescher and the N&O can't bring themselves to say that.

But does anyone who knows the N&O think they would?

Pelosi favors roll-call vote

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

...[Speaker Nancy Pelosi] said she supports a roll-call vote at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this month. Supporters of former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton had been pressing to have her name put into nomination to recognize the millions of votes she received during the primaries.

Clinton and presumed nominee Barack Obama agreed to do that Thursday, but the mechanics of a roll-call vote are still to be worked out. Pelosi argued that the roll call is a tradition and would be good for the party.

The entire SFC article's here.

The devil's often in the details, in this case what the Chronicle calls "the mechanics of a roll-call."

Will each state on its own select who'll announce the state's vote? That's usually what happens. At this convention most state's will be splitting their votes. Such states in the past have often had more than one person announce the vote. Will that be permitted?

I ask that because one thing Team Obama will struggle to do at the convention is present "a moderate face" to the nation. Comparing our military managing Gitmo to Nazis and Pol Pots thugs as Ill. Sen. Dick Durbin did may generate applause at some Dem meetings, but Obama's people are not going to want anything like that said at the convention.

But someone during the roll-call with the mike and camera on h/her may not be able to resist letting fly with remarks from the Dem's far-left field.

The more people who get a chance to announce delegate votes, the more chance there is of that happening.

Final roll-call thought for now: I'm betting Team Obama is working with the networks now to try to get them to do as much interviewing and analysis as possible during the roll-call.

Have the Clinton’s Hijacked the Convention?

At Fox News Dick Morris and Eileen McGann say - - -

Hillary and Bill have hijacked the Denver convention, making it into a carbon copy of what it would have looked like had she won until the last possible moment. By the time Obama gets up to speak and put his stamp on the convention,
Hillary will have had one prime time night all to herself. Bill will have pre-empted a second night. Hillary will have had all the nominating and seconding speeches she wants. And the roll call of the states would record, in graphic detail, how the voters of state after state rejected Obama's candidacy in the primaries.

Only then, after three and a half days of all Clinton all the time will the convention then, finally, turn to its nominee and allow him to have an hour in the sun!

And what leverage did the Clintons have to achieve all of this? None! Hillary could not have taken the convention by storm and any show of party disunity would marginalize her forever in the Democratic Party.

Had she or her supporters tried to pull off distracting demonstrations or to recreate Lafayette Park in Chicago in 1968, she would have paid a permanent price among the party faithful for sabotaging Obama's candidacy.

This Clintonian tour de force raises a key question about Barack Obama: Is he strong enough to be president or can he be pushed around? His failure to stand up to the Clintons makes one wonder how effective he will be against bin Laden, Iran, Chavez, or Putin. …

The rest of the Morris-McGann column’s here.

Comments:

Gee, the Clinton’s muscling in on Obama and trying to steal the convention. Who would have thought they’d do that?

Morris and McGann don’t mention Michelle Obama is listed as the prime speaker for Monday night.

Michelle on Monday; Hillary on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how enthusiastically the convention receives each woman.

And I’m not thinking only of how their speeches will be received although that’s obviously very important.

I’m also thinking of how enthusiastically they’ll each be received as they walk up to the podium. Those could be telling moments.

Granting that the Obama people had to give Hillary her night, how did Hillary get to go second?

With Hillary going on Tuesday, she and her supporters will have a good idea of what they need to do to top anything Michelle Obama did. And Hillary’s supporters on the floor and elsewhere in the hall will know how long and loud they need to cheer to top the reception Michelle Obama received.

Surely Obama’s people knew all of that.

I’m sure you agree Morris and McGann raise an important and troubling matter when they note: “His failure to stand up to the Clintons makes one wonder how effective he will be against bin Laden, Iran, Chavez, or Putin.”

You have to wonder whether Obama’s status within the party is more “celebrity” than “hands on the levers.”

Exposing the Raleigh N&O’s liberal bias

Mike Williams does that today. My comments follow below the end line

Mike begins - - -

Professor Glenn Reynolds tells me that U.S. Representative Heath Shuler (D-NC) has a possible conflict of interest between a House committee he sits on and some land he owns in Tennessee. A Knoxville newspaper picked up on the story here. So did the Asheville Citizen-Times. Ed Morrissey derides “Another Democrat with a government land deal!”

I missed this story in The N&O, so I did a search on newsobserver.com. Nada.

Shuler, you may recall, was one of many Dems elected in 2006 in the so-called backlash against corrupt Republicans. The 110^th Congress claims to be the most open, honest and ethical in our history. So you’d think The N&O might be interested in yet another Congressman slopping at the trough, and if Shuler were a Republican incumbent who could be unseated in 2008 you’d undoubtedly be right.

Which brings me to the real point of this email. I did my best to ridicule Executive Editor John Drescher’s pathetic defense of The N&O’s coverage of John Edwards’ fall from grace. But my efforts pale into insignificance compared to this skewering by a retired NC journalist posting at John in Carolina’s blog. An excerpt:

The N&O should have owned the John Edwards story.

Raleigh was Edwards' political launch pad in 1998 when he first ran for the Senate. He lives three miles west of the N&O's Chapel Hill office. His presidential campaign headquarters was about the same distance away in Southern Village. And the N&O, for more than a century the guidon of the North Carolina Democratic Party, was widely regarded as one of Edwards' most loyal acolytes….

The N&O has come up woefully short on both Edwards and Duke Lacrosse, two stories with national scope that happened right in its own bailiwick. Why? Extreme liberal bias, and “guidon of the North Carolina Democratic Party” are my answers, but maybe that’s just me.

Thank you, Mike.

IMO – the N&O has not only a liberal bias, but also an increasingly Leftist bias.

Leftists don’t much care that the N&O mislead them on the Duke hoax and they supported Nifong when it was obvious he was leading a frame-up attempt. Leftist journalists are agenda driven and mean to be.

Liberals, on the other hand, were more inclined to see and dislike the N&O’s misleading them and many of them, but by no means all, were opposed to the frame-up attempt. Liberal journalists mean to present the truth and, in my experience, often don’t see their biases.

As for bias playing a role in the N&O’s Edwards and Duke Hoax coverage consider all the protestations we’ve gotten from editors Drescher and Vaden about the Enquirer not being a reliable source and the need to confirm what’s said versus the N&O’s rushing onto page one Mangum’s charges and false bio.

And don’t forget the “Priors” story. The N&O placed on page one on March 28, 2006 the names, misdemeanor charges and their outcomes for about 16 members of the lacrosse team, including one who had been found not guilty of the charge. The charges included underage drinking, and riding in a car with an open beer can.

But when Edwards, whom Vaden described as the N&O’s “hometown” candidate with a good shot at the presidency publicly denied an affair the N&O didn’t publish it. Drescher said “it didn’t make the cut.”

It seems there wasn’t strong enough substantiation in Edwards’ case.

With the lacrosse players, of course, there was substantiation which satisfied the N&O: Crystal Mangum said it.

The Churchill Series - Aug. 14, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Below are the first sentences of a BBC radio address Churchill delivered on April 27, 1941. Russia and America were not yet in the war. Britain had endured eight months of heavy bombing. Bombing casualty estimates to that time included 30,000 killed. No one knew when the bombing would cease.

Churchill began - - -

I was asked last week whether I was aware of some uneasiness which it was said existed in the country on account of the gravity, as it was described, of the war situation.

So I thought it would be a good thing to go and see for myself what this “uneasiness” amounted to, and I went to some of our great cities and seaports which had been most heavily bombed, and to some of the places where the poorest people had got it worst.
I have come back not only reassured, but refreshed.

To leave the offices in Whitehall with their ceaseless hum of activity and stress, and to go out to the front, by which I mean the streets and wharves of London or Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, Swansea or Bristol, is like going out of a hothouse on to the bridge of a fighting ship.

It is a tonic which I should recommend any who are suffering from fretfulness to take in strong doses when they have need of it. …
_________________________________________

What we’ve just read won't find its way into a collection of Churchill’s most magisterial speeches. But the beginning of that April 1941 radio address surely belongs in a collection of his most psychologically effective statements.

Faced with needing to brace the morale of the British people through a long ordeal the end of which many could not see, Churchill in a few sentences does the following:

He tells the people he’s heard of “some uneasiness” (really theirs but he doesn’t say that) and lets them know he checked it out.

They needn’t worry. Based on what he saw – he details some of it – the Prime Minister assures the country he returned to Whitehall “not only reassured, but refreshed.”

The people understand his perfectly chosen “bridge of a fighting ship” figure of speech refers to them.

For those suffering from “fretfulness” Churchill recommends the “tonic “ you get on the “bridge of a fighting ship.”

Little wonder the British people carried on when the way to victory was still uncertain.
__________________________________________________________
The text cited here is found of pg. 97 of His Finest Hours: The War Speeches of Winston Churchill. Introduction by Graham Stewart. (Querus, 2007)

“Clear conscience” Reid gets prime speaker’s slot

Politico reports:

Barack Obama has chosen Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to carry the Democratic party's message on energy policy, giving Reid a prime Wednesday speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.

Reid will join a heavy-hitting lineup that night that includes Bill Clinton, whomever Obama chooses as his vice president, Bill Richardson and Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.). …

Reid's speech is sure to disappoint many Democrats who are still eager to hear the message Reid delivered in April 2007. From Fox News:

... "Now I believe, myself, that the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and you have to make your own decision as to what the president knows: that this war is lost, that the surge is not accomplishing anything," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

Repeating remarks he made to President Bush during a meeting of congressional leaders at the White House, Reid said the president is hearing only from people who are backing up his view of the war.

"I know I was the odd guy out yesterday at the White House, but I at least told him what he needs to hear. … I told George Bush what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear, I did that and my conscience is great," said Reid, who was one of several lawmakers who met with the president on Wednesday at the White House. Reid added that more people need to tell Bush the same….

Folks, can you agree Reid will tell the Dems what Obama wants them to hear, not what the Nevada Senator would like to say? All with a clear conscience, of course.

Politico’s story’s here; Fox News’ is here.

An Edwards Story Lesson: Use the Elephant

Bob Wilson is a retired North Carolina journalist. His column follows:


"I do not view The National Enquirer as a credible source of news." John Drescher, executive editor of The News & Observer

“The truth of the matter is journalists take tips from all sorts of sources, and some of them are unsavory. That's not so important as what you do with the tip." Rick Thames, executive editor of The Charlotte Observer

The N&O should have owned the John Edwards story.

Raleigh was Edwards' political launch pad in 1998 when he first ran for the Senate. He lives three miles west of the N&O's Chapel Hill office. His presidential campaign headquarters was about the same distance away in Southern Village. And the N&O, for more than a century the guidon of the North Carolina Democratic Party, was widely regarded as one of Edwards' most loyal acolytes.

Yet it was The Charlotte Observer, once the N&O's arch rival and now an uneasy partner in a shotgun marriage imposed by their owner, McClatchy Newspapers, which did what the N&O would not: Anoint the Edwards story with mainstream respectability and get it on the front pages of America’s newspapers.

The contrast between how the two papers approached the story speaks volumes about their newsroom philosophies.

In a rare weekday column Drescher yesterday attempted to excuse his paper's anemic reports on the emerging scandal (the N&O first mentioned it July 31 in a brief “B” section item based on Observer reporting. But the hard truth is the N&O was a nonstarter on one of the biggest political stories in recent memory.

And it was right there in the N&O's front yard. (Full disclosure: Drescher insists the N&O’s coverage was “aggressive but fair.” His column’s here.)

Drescher’s “aggressive but fair” assertion will puzzle N&O readers who recall its public editor Ted Vaden’s Aug. 3 column closer:

I worry about where the coverage goes from here. In chasing information like birth certificate listings, it becomes easy to get caught up in the salacious details and drop the restraint that has marked The N&O's responsible approach to the story.

Yes, Edwards has been mentioned as a vice presidential candidate, although this controversy makes that less likely. But he is now, after all, a private figure, and there's a point where examining his sex life doesn't serve a public interest and risks turning a respectable newspaper into "The News and Enquirer."

Not until Edwards' Aug. 8 mea culpa on ABC's Nightline did the N&O appear to wake up to the importance of what people with an Internet connections had been reading about for weeks.

Rick Thames, realizing as Drescher didn't that facts exist independently of their sources, didn’t dismiss the Enquirer’s July 22 story reporting the Edwards-Hunter tryst. He had the Observer check it out.

By July 24 political reporter Jim Morrill posted on an Observer blog a summary of the Enquirer story and his interview with its editor David Perel.

Morrill also reported contacting the Beverly Hilton which gave him a “non-disclosure policy” response but no denial of the events, including lobby, stairways and Men’s room commotions the Enquirer reported.

Most important of all as events turned out, Morrill got former DNC chair Dan Fowler on the record explaining why the Enquirer's allegations, if not put to rest by Edwards, would wreck his political future.

In the days that followed the Observer broke story after story. On July 30 when a Washington-based Observer reporter staked Edwards out and confronted him with specific questions based on the Enquirer’s story, he literally ran away.

By the next day the Observer had located Hunter’s baby’s birth certificate and published Lisa Zagaroli's story reporting it listed no father and providing Observer readers with an excellent summary of the story starting with the Enquirer disclosures.

The Observer's breakthrough story appeared Aug. 7. Reporter Mark Johnson quoted three top Democratic operatives saying Edwards had better explain the Enquirer's allegations or forget speaking at the Democratic Convention. Tellingly, one of the operatives was Gary Pearce, a former N&O political reporter turned Democratic strategist. Pearce masterminded Edwards' 1998 election to the U.S. Senate.

A day later, Edwards was on Nightline.

When Edwards flew too close to the sun, as such self-absorbed, ambitious types always do, the wax melted. Edwards dropped like McClatchy stock, searing both his Mr. Clean image and a newspaper that seemed as oblivious to reality as its favorite son.

The old “gatekeeper” news paradigm crashed with Edwards. In 2008, a parallel pipeline of news and opinion –Internet, talk radio and cable TV -- disgorges enormous amounts of information and misinformation round-the-clock. On the Edwards story, the N&O haughtily ignored it all; the Observer looked for what it could use.

White gloves still have their place in today's news environment, but watch out for the new elephant in town. He can break your china and hurt your credibility. But treat him right and he can help you get the story.

Rick Thames will tell you that.

“race cuts both ways in this election”

Irwin Stelzer in the Telegraph today lays out reasons why Sen. Obama should be leading Sen. McCain.

He continues:

But the polls suggest that the candidates are in a dead heat.

Some put this down to race. But race cuts both ways in this election.

Ignore the fact that only five per cent of Americans say they would not vote for a black presidential candidate. More important is the 19 per cent who say that most of the people they know - not including themselves, of course - would not vote for such a candidate.

On the other side of the ledger is the massive increase in registration and participation of black and pro-Obama Hispanic voters, white voters eager to demonstrate their lack of prejudice by voting for a black candidate, and folks who believe that the mere fact that Obama is black means that the world will think better of America if its electorate relocates Obama from the Senate to the Oval Office.
In sum, it is difficult to tell just how much race might be affecting the polls, or would affect them if respondents felt unembarrassed to tell the truth, and in which direction. …

What Stelzer says about race as an election factor is reasonable right now, but there are a few things I'd add.

I'd put emphasis on “now.” We may very well hear statements and witness events before November which will heighten race as a campaign factor.

Something else: most MSM are more gah-gah for the Dem presidential candidate than usual and less inclined than usual to ask him tough questions.

I think Obama’s race explains that.

It’s been 5 months since Obama was forced to make his Philadelphia speech which Team Obama billed as “on race.”

In fact, the speech was a so far largely successful effort to: 1) fog over Obama’s 20 year close relationship with the racist, America-bashing Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and 2) avoid answering tough questions about it.

Obama’s “I didn’t hear any of that stuff” excuse should have lead MSM to ask: Well then, didn’t Michelle ever tell you? Didn’t anyone else in the congregation tell you? How could anyone, Sen. Obama, belong to a church for 20 years and not know its pastor said and believed things like “KKK –America?”

But those questions haven’t been asked and reported by MSM.

However, as we get closer to the election the pressure will build for MSM to ask them and for the Obama’s to answer them.

As that happens it’s likely race will grow in importance as a campaign factor, if only because decent people who are rightfully concerned about the Obama’s failure to satisfactorily answer those questions will be slimed by many Dems and their MSM flacks as racists.

It’s a long way to November.

Stelzer’s entire column’s here.