A matter of perspective
The NYT editorial board does not like a North Carolina GOP political ad featuring Reverend Jeremiah Wright that has been popular with some in conservative circles:
Manipulative. Shameful. Race-baiting. Those are the only words to describe a new television ad from the Republican Party running in North Carolina that attacks Senator Barack Obama as “too extreme” for the state…The ad is built around the well-known video clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. — Mr. Obama’s former pastor — declaring “God damn America.” We have said before that we find Rev. Wright’s oratory racist. And we have criticized Senator Obama for waiting too long to denounce it. His relationship with the Rev. Wright is undeniably a liability for his campaign.
But that’s not what this ad is about. The assertion that Mr. Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina” is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state.
“A clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state?” That seems a bit overdone. For example, it won’t be surprising to see a similar ad using Senator Obama’s endorsement by Hamas somewhere down the road, and with as dramatic footage as his opponents are able to find. Will that too be “bigotry”? (By the way, the NYT said something positive about Senator McCain: “Senator McCain was right when he said, of the new ad, that ‘there’s no place for that kind of campaigning — and the American people don’t want it, period’.” The Times was busy in other articles vacuously implying wrongdoing and hypocrisy on McCain’s part at the same time.)
Clearly the Wright issue is not going away in the 2008 campaign cycle, and the reaction of the Times indicates that it must be effective to some extent. Indeed, this editorial was the very first time that the NYT saw fit to print the most offensive remarks of Reverend Wright in one of its news stories or editorials. It had previously avoided doing so for a full six weeks. The Wright issue would appear to have finally gained traction in the elite media.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:44 am
The NYT has spoken!
The Reverend Wright has suffered the extreme penalty!
The issue is closed!
April 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Manipulative? That’s the word I’d use to describe the Times’ non-coverage. Let’s see, we have a novice with no record of accomplishment running for president, and we’re not supposed to ask about his associates?
Ms Ferraro was correct.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Wright is not fit for polite company, Obama is not fit to be an elected official of any kind by virtue of his support of Wright’s institutionalized hate (no, he only repudiated Wright when he was forced to, and then in a half-hearted manner), and the NYT is morally bankrupt and undeserving of having an editorial page from which it can utter its duplicitous propaganda, and a news department that seems to exist only to suppress public awareness of this whole evil mess.
What a stench surrounds this whole candidacy and its enablers!!