Campaigns & Elections

One of the more controversial statements from Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday was his reference to his white grandmother's "fear of black men who passed by her on the street."Curiously, his most recent account of her anxieties doesn't mesh with what he wrote about this subject in his 1996 book "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."As neatly identified by Steve Sailer (h/t NB…

In today's great minds think alike moment, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein observed the same oddity in Barack Obama's much-publicized speech Tuesday.For those with short memories, Finkelstein noted that Obama's reference to his white grandmother's "fear of black men who passed by her on the street" was eerily similar to a statement Jesse Jackson made in 1996.On Wednesday…

Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show" devoted four segments to Obama’s speech on race and the Jeremiah Wright controversy and that coverage began with a proclamation by co-host Maggie Rodriguez that: "It's being called a defining cultural moment in America. Barack Obama speaks about America's racial stalemate, a moving moment, a political risk." Rodriguez went on to tease upcoming coverage of the speech…

There's a new entry next to Mika Brzezinski's name in the annals of MSM elitism. The Morning Joe panelist today lamented blue-collar whites who "can't hear" the message Barack Obama propounded. Poor benighted souls. Joe Scarborough called Mika on it.Brzezinski's comment came in response to Scarborough's exposition of why he didn't think Obama's speech would work with many blue-collar whites.…

On Wednesday's "Good Morning America," various hosts and reporters could barely restrain their glee and admiration for Senator Barack Obama's Tuesday speech about race and the incendiary comments of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Co-host Robin Roberts hyperbolically claimed that "some" believe "his speech was not only important for his campaign but also for the future of the country." In a…

Applauding Barack Obama's March 18 speech, Time's Joe Klein (file photo at right) argued that most people will understand why the Illinois senator could not throw his pastor under the bus, even as Klein applauded the fact that Obama made his grandmother a speedbump on the bus ride to the Denver convention (emphasis mine):The part about his grandmother is the real payoff, though: I'd say that most…

Despite the glowing praise from supposedly impartial press representatives across the fruited plain, March 18, 2008 could go down in history as the day Barack Obama destroyed his chances of becoming the first black President of the United States. Americans shouldn't be fooled by all the predictable fawning from the usual suspects in the mainstream media, for this was not a shining moment…

Like so many of his colleagues, Jeff Greenfield comes to the MSM from a background in Dem politics, having served as a speechwriter for RFK. But more than most, the CBS senior political correspondent demonstrates an ability to put partisanship aside in his analyses. Witness Greenfields's comments on this morning's Early Show regarding Barack Obama's speech on race on this morning's Early Show.…

Playing the moral equivalence card in his speech this morning, Barack Obama said this:I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her…

Following Monday’s sanitized coverage of the controversial comments of Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show" continued to gloss over the most inflammatory of Wright’s comments, spending over 6 minutes on Obama’s upcoming speech on the issue while devoting only 16 seconds of video to Wright’s more mild statements. Following this video, co-host Russ Mitchell…

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. -- Barack Obama, Huffington Post, March 14, 2008The key question before Barack Obama today was the one going to his integrity: was he was telling the truth when he claimed in his HuffPo piece of…