Witness the peerless takedown of Timmeh Russert. A thing of beauty.
His shillery came later. In a week when St. John McCain was being roasted over his lobbyist-laden past and when the FEC had started to look at the Straight Talker's cheap-ass lawyering around the campaign-finance statutes, Russert chose to spend useless minutes hasing Barack Obama around something Obama had said last year. Hillary was dead right there at the end, although she needs work on the snark, too. Nothing about China. Nothing about FISA or signing statements or the wreck of the constitutional order. Nothing about climate change.
But plenty of time for a three-rail shot about Obama, his pastor, and Farrakhan, whose name I swear I have not heard twice in the past decade. (Marty Peretz hears it through the fillings in his teeth, but that's another matter.) That stuff was truly rank.
What in the name of god does the relationship of Obama's pastor to Louis Farrakhan have to do with being president of the United States? John McCain's state co-chairman in Arizona, a sitting congresscritter, got himself indicted this week. Think that'll come up any time soon? Hell, if you wanted to tweak Obama about somebody with whom he had a more tangible connection, Tony Rezko went on trial YESTERDAY. No mention of it that I heard.
The only reason to bring up Farrakhan was to play the Scary Negro card. At this point the lines between hackery and shillery form a perfect right angle and stretch on to infinity. And, by the way, it would help MSNBC's campaign to become the Scourge Of Public Bigots if it didn't keep putting Pat Buchanan on my TV screen every 11 seconds.
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