17 June 2008

Is McCain backer worse than Rev. Wright? (and where is the media outrage?)

Are the media pundits continuing to give John McCain a free ride?

This past spring, Barack Obama came under fire for comments made in the past by his former paster, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It got so bad that Obama eventually resigned from that church, even though Wright is no longer the pastor.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, as we discover that a major McCain supporter, Texas oilman Clayton Williams, once joked that women should relax and enjoy being raped. He said, "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

Does this man have a mother? A grandmother? A wife? A daughter? Would he joke this way if one of them were raped?

From Wright, we heard the impassioned pleas of a man who lived through the civil rights era and still harbors a lot of pent-up frustration with the system.

From Williams, we heard..... what?!

As a result of these revelations, McCain's people said last Friday that they had canceled a fundraiser that Williams had offered to host. But that suggests that these comments are some kind of new revelation, when in fact they were aired in a 1990 campaign ad when Williams was running against Ann Richards for the Texas governorship. Don't McCain's campaign aides know about Google?

Now it seems it doesn't matter, because a new report by the Houston Chronicle indicates that the fundraiser was merely postponed until later in the summer. So McCain is apparently going to accept Williams' support, even as he is trying to reach out to Hillary Clinton's disappointed supporters.

This is an outrage. But where is the outrage among the media? While there has been some mention of Williams' rape comments, this matter doesn't seem to be getting nearly as much attention as the Reverend Wright scandal.

Oh, yeah: Reverend Wright is an "angry black man". Williams is just a rich white guy who made a bad "joke".

This is America in 2008.

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