ALSO, America apparently the land of permanent racism

I am wondering if CNN was out of the country last November 4? Maybe it missed that McCain lost the election because, once again, CNN trotted out an Old Media campaign lie aimed at making John McCain "as bad as" the Reverend Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright by using the talking point that in Reverend John Hagee McCain had a "controversial" pastor, too? Not only did CNN fall back on the lie that Hagee is somehow just as bad as Wright -- and thereby smearing John McCain with Wright's racist hatespeak -- but CNN got a twofer with this piece by again portraying America as the land of permanent, unrelenting racism by hinting that Obama will never get a chance because he's black.

News flash to CNN: Barack HAS gotten a chance. He was elected with a comfortable majority of votes.

If anyone wonders what any criticism of Barack Obama will be termed by the Old Media, CNN's headlined "Will Obama have to be better because he's black?" seems to answer to that question. You see, Obama won't be given a chance, CNN tells us, because he's black. Any failure will be made larger because he's black. And any criticism of him is just racism forcing Obama to "work harder than whites" at his job.

Frank Rich has apparently figured out that after January 20, it's not going to be as much fun for him.  True, the Times columnist will surely disinter W as necessary to explain away Obama's missteps. But the buck for whatever post-inauguration problems the country faces will land ever more resoundingly on the new president's desk.

And so, like a vaudevillian tapping as fast as he can while anticipating the hook, Rich seems determined to spend these last few weeks of the Bush administration dancing on GOP graves and luxuriating in Republicans' perceived pain.  You might say Frank is making hatred while the sun shines.

As we discussed last week in Have Fun For Now, Frank, Rich's immediate post-election column was one long poke in the Republican eye.  The Timester is back at it again this morning, outdoing himself in sheer vitriol as he pour buckets of salt, generously seasoned with schadenfreude, into Republican wounds.

Annotated excerpts from The Moose Stops Here:

In The Washington Post’s religion section on Saturday, reporter Michelle Boorstein wrote an article on "Altar Egos," on how clergymen have become liabilities for the presidential contenders. It’s a convenient attempt to once again blur Barack Obama’s problem with Jeremiah Wright, his own minister of 20 years, with John McCain’s problem with two evangelical preachers who he sought out for an endorsement, but have never been his pastor. The top of the Religion page has a vertical column with pictures of McCain on top, then Rev. John Hagee, then Obama, and then the Wrong Reverend Wright. But Boorstein’s other task seemed to be promoting the secularist God-bashers who spew on the Washington Post’s website, complaining that both parties shouldn’t be courting ministers or quoting the Bible at all:

Here's something you don't see every day: a liberal, female editor of a leading liberal online magazine stating with cameras rolling that most press members "Hate, hate Hillary Clinton."

Yet, that's exactly what occurred Sunday morning when Salon's editor-in-chief Joan Walsh spoke some truths about the media's love affair with Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, as well as their disdain for the former first lady (video embedded right).

Also surprising was Walsh's view of liberal assertions that the Rev. John Hagee is as big an issue for Sen. John McCain's candidacy as Rev. Jeremiah Wright is for Obama's.

But, before we get there, here were Walsh's comments about media bias during this campaign:

The left-wing blogosphere's outrage against ABC ["Boycott Fig Newtons!"] over its allegedly unfair questioning of Obama during Wednesday's debate has seeped over into the MSM in the form of Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column of this morning. While the headline moots the matter in the interrogative "Tough questions or just plain bias?", there's no doubt as to the answer in Jackson's mind. Just two paragraphs in, the columnist unleashes [emphasis added]:

In some 1,600 words of transcript, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos tried to eviscerate Obama in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

Somebody better break it to the New York Times: they might still be the paper of record in their own minds, but to the rest of the world they're just one more dead-tree joint struggling for attention.

The Old Grey Lady's unjustified conceit was on display during this afternoon's Hardball, when one of its columnists was aghast that Chris Matthews had had the audacity not to have read her oeuvre.

Deborah Solomon, who has a weekly column in the NYT Sunday magazine, had interviewed the Rev. John Hagee, a minister who has endorsed McCain and has made a number of controversial statements. I'd mention in passing that while Hagee's critics have accused him of anti-Semitism, he has in fact received numerous awards from Jewish groups for his steadfast support of Israel.

Roland Martin, a talk radio host out of Chicago and contributor to CNN, appearing on the network immediately Barack Obama’s "race speech" on Tuesday morning, compared the reaction to Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s much-publicized comments to the reaction to the Catholic sex scandal. Co-anchor Heidi Collins asked, "He [Obama] didn't disagree strong enough to go to a different church though. He stayed for many, many years. How do you think that will play?" Martin’s responded, "But frankly, I think that is irrelevant, because I don't -- look, I was born and raised Catholic. The first 25 years of my life of my life, I was Catholic.... And there are a number of people out there who are still Catholic today, even though the Church dropped the ball when it came to the whole issue of sex offenders, and some who left. But that's fine. But the reality is a person's faith is a personal decision."

Martin made similar comments on Monday’s "Newsroom" program during a discussion of Rev. Wright’s comments with co-anchor Don Lemon and Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus at the bottom of the 3 pm Eastern hour. "[Y]ou have a number of people who have said that, for Catholics, will you leave the Catholic Church because of what the church did when it came to sexual abuse victims? And you know what? A lot of folks have stayed."