Dear Media: Please Fact Check Obama

March 18th, 2008 7:13 PM

Flipping the channels I am seeing the media fawning in awe over Obama's speech on race.  Chris Matthews even compared his speech to Abraham Lincoln.

It seems that, once again, the media have fallen for an elegant farce.  They lavish over his oratory skills and pretty phrases, and ignore the meat of it.  If you haven't heard the speech yet, make sure to watch the video with a blog reaction roundup.

Once again the media fail to comb through the rhetoric and ask the questions that need that remain unanswered.  For example, if Obama was so troubled by Wright’s words… why keep bringing his daughters?

The goalposts have definitely been moved.  The least they could do is to call him out on his lie:

Contrary to his earlier suggestion, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) acknowledged in his speech Tuesday that he had heard “controversial” remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy?” Obama said. “Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

Obama did not specify which statements.

In his first detailed response to the firestorm over Wright’s remarks charging that the United States is a racist country, Obama said in a posting on The Huffington Post:

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.”

Once again the blogs do the job the media are supposed to do, while the media play games.  Well, at least one liberal talking head talks a little sense.