The "Friendship" That Isn't There

The Washington Post tries again today to link Barack Obama and Louis Farrakhan in the following underhanded fashion (in the “Under God” column by Claire Hoffman, lending the proper satiric touch to the whole nonsensical episode in my opinion – in her column, she’s actually trying to let “St. McCain” off the hook for his political dalliance with John Hagee)…

Where things get uncomfortable is when Hagee is grinning on stage next to McCain, who could lead this diverse country and directly affect the lives of said Catholics, gays and Muslims. Obama faced this same question of a divisive friendship last week when he said he would reject the endorsement of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

This is ridiculous; there is no “friendship” between Obama and Farrakhan. Obama has “rejected and denounced” Farrakhan as thoroughly as possible (here).

But of course, this really isn’t about anything approximating reality. It is all about our media trying to construct a narrative along the lines of “well, Obama received an endorsement from Farrakhan, so it’s all right for McCain to accept one from an anti-Catholic bigot.”

And today, Richard Cohen tells us here that it is up to Obama to save African Americans from their collective plight of lost job opportunities and the inability to advance themselves economically (a result partly of bad individual decision-making in many cases, but also our country’s refusal to invest in our cities particularly under Dubya and fight poverty as well). This comes on the heels of Cohen’s “piling on” column concerning Obama and Farrakhan, which kind of makes me wonder what human crisis involving people of color Cohen will call on Obama to resolve next week (and of course, Cohen conveniently tries to absolve himself and everyone else of supporting the regime that has done virtually nothing concerning the task now consigned to Obama).

(I suppose Cohen could call on Obama to help the Democratic congress to “grow a pair,” but I think that’s too much of a job for any mere mortal at this point…related to this post which is somewhat off-topic, but highly important for the moment).