Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, September 22, 2008 10:27:47 AM
Politico
must have tried transforming itself into The Onion over the weekend.
Ben Smith and Avni Zenilman try to make the case that Barack Obama
didn’t want a national conversation on race during the election, but in
doing so, they deliberately ignore all evidence to the contrary
They have to be joking, right? They didn’t want a national
conversation on race? How then do they explain these attacks on
Republicans and the McCain campaign that took place all summer long?
Far from not wanting to have a conversation on race, Obama and his surrogates have been unable to go three weeks since the end of the primaries without race-baiting. Team O has made the supposedly racist motives of his critics the main pushback against all criticisms, with the media’s complicity.
The candidate himself has made the accusation more than once, signaling
leadership on this smear tactic, a signal that his followers have
gladly received and amplified.
The inability to prove a negative makes the “We’re not racists”
response sound defensive and oddly confirming of the smear — which is
why smears are so effective.
Smith and Zenilman are an example of the other reason why it’s
effective. The media has allowed Obama to get away with it, perhaps
because their own hostility to Republicans allows them to believe it.
It’s what allows Politico to report with a straight face the notion
that Team Obama has ‘avoided race’ when they’ve talked almost non-stop
about nothing else.