This week, Bill Kristol wrote one of the MSM's wisest assessments of the Democratic primaries, and Peggy Noonan's commentary about Reverend Wright is downright thoughtful.

Allen Funt is dead, so there's gotta be an Ashton Kutcher in here somewhere!

It's getting mighty crowded here under the bus, but please make yourself t' home!

In retrospect, you shoulda been a Republican. None of them get tossed down here. Darnedest thing, isn't it?

Last year Rolling Stone magazine published an article about Barack Obama called "Destiny's Child" by Ben Wallace-Wells. The story deserves a second look, because at the time Obama was a virtual unknown to most of the public.

The piece begins with Obama's arrival in Washington D.C., then shifts to his meteoric rise in the Democratic party:

Or
Why Jeremiah Wright is Obama’s Monica

Last night, we saw exactly why Barack Obama has a Jeremiah Wright problem. Just as Bill Clinton “lied” to us about Monica Lewinsky by telling us something that may be true but was clearly meant to deceive us, Obama is hiding behind the closely parsed “specific statement” defense to deflect criticism of his relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright.

I didn’t care that Bill Clinton was fellated by Monica Lewinsky. And I don’t care that Barack Obama came to terms with what it really means to be “Black in America” because Jeremiah Wright helped him to understand it. As far as racial issues are concerned, I share Wright’s perspective, and think that what Obama is telling America is pure pandering.

“several Africans who had worked at the Laboratoire Medical de Stanleyville (LMS) during the 1950s. These witnesses reported that tissue culture had indeed been prepared at the LMS, that it had been prepared "mainly from chimpanzees", and that moreover the head of the virology department, Paul Osterrieth, had been "making the polio vaccines" in his lab.”

Mike Finnigan alerted me to this clip, specifically the section between 3:15 and 5:40.

Seems to me that Fox News and ABC have some 'splaining to do about why they left out a noteworthy context: that Wright's citation of America's "chickens coming home to roost" on 9/11 began with his attribution of the phrase to a white ambassador named "Peck," whom he says — in the original, now controversial sermon — made that statement on a Fox News show.

Especially for Fox, putting aside that network's "forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" exemption, stripping out this context is the kind of thing that used to be called unacceptable journalism.

As for Wright, however, I don't find this additional context exculpatory. Regardless of how much his "roost" rant is a quote, paraphrase, riff, or whatever, he is still enthusiastically rationalizing the wanton murder of 3,000 innocent civilians. For some inexplicable reason, that doesn't sit well with me.

Now, one has to wonder... did Obama know about this fuller context when he wrote his legendary speech of last week? It's hard to believe that his staff didn't comb over the "offending" source material, that they didn't talk with Wright about the controversial sermons — and that no one brought the "white ambassador" context to his attention.

Why, then, didn't he bring it up?

Even though I've been critical of Wright, I felt honor-bound to share this additional information as soon as I heard about it. Yet Obama didn't, and
I am seriously puzzled about that.   Read more…

Among the many casualties of this corrosive primary season is nuance.

There are three accepted positions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

1. He has nothing to apologize for. Everything Wright says is right-on.
2. Once in a while, he says something a little overboard, but think of it as reparations for (or as repercussions of) racism.
3. He hates America, and anyone who would be associated with him does, too.

Obama has chosen door #2.