N&O’s partisan swill and race pass for Obama

McClatchy’s liberal/leftist Raleigh News & Observer today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.

No surprise, that.

If you read the paper’s news columns, you know it’s been in the tank for Obama since before the May Democratic primary in which he handily defeated Sen. Hillary Clinton.

But a few things about the lengthy endorsement did surprise me.

It made no mention of Wright, Ayers and Rezko.

I wasn’t expecting much, but I didn’t think the N&O would totally ignore Obama’s close ties to the racist, anti-American Wright, the unrepentant terrorist Ayers and the convicted felon Rezko.

Given the importance of the three in shaping Obama’s thinking and advancing his career, I expected the N&O would devote at least a few sentences to them, albeit the kind that would mellow out their natures, actions and Obama’s longstanding, close ties to them until this year when they became political liabilities.

I thought the N&O would offer something like: “We eschew Rev. Wright’s less temperate “snippets” as we do some of Professor Ayers’ 60s radicalism. The same is true of those of Mr. Rezko’s efforts which have brought him attention he did not seek. However, since Sen. Obama has severed whatever ties he might have had to the preacher, educator and businessman, we see no reason for public concern.”

The N&O presented its endorsement as a carefully reasoned, informed judgment. A few sentences such as I’ve suggested might have helped the more gullible readers think that’s what they were getting.

But an Obama editorial endorsement that fails to discuss in any serious way his extensive and very troubling relationships with Wright, Ayers and Rezko shouldn’t fool anyone: it can’t be anything but partisan swill.

One of the most disturbing things Obama's said this year occurred in March when he told an interviewer his grandmother was a “typical white person.”

Obama had said the day before that when he was growing up, she'd made some racist remarks that made him “cringe.”

I’m sorry he had those experiences but his remark about “a typical white person” made me cringe the way I do when I hear someone say “He’s a typical black person.”

Obama should have been pressed by MSM to at least explain and possibly apologize for his remark just as Sen. McCain would have been had he said someone was “a typical black person.”

Obama’s “typical white person” remark, some race cards he’s played during the campaign, most notably and disgustingly against former President Bill Clinton, and his tolerance for, if not embrace, of Jeremiah Wright’s pervasive, intense racism all should have been examined by the N&O.

But it’s editorial says nothing about any of that.

The N&O gives Obama a complete race pass.

And yes, the N&O's the newspaper that slimed, lied about and endangered the Duke lacrosse players with its publication of the Vigilante poster, all the while decrying what it said were racist remarks made by the players. [Subsequent inquiry has led to the conclusion that at most two players each made a racial remark in response to a provocative remark by “the second dancer” hired to perform at the Duke lacrosse party; that remark being, according to the dancer, Kim Roberts, “little dick white boys.”]

Having pounded the lacrosse players for racial remarks, the N&O now ignores Sen. Obama's documented and more extensive racial remarks as well as his close friendship and generous financial support of one of America's best known racists.

The N&O's editorial today was as naked an example of giving someone a race pass as anything Josephus Daniels ever wrote.

I was surprised the N&O didn't even bother with some kink of fig leaf. The editors must have thought nobody would notice.

The N&O editorial’s here.