The media play the race card on Obama

[Commentary] The news media have been shamefully stoking the idea that the only way Barack Obama could possibly lose the presidential election is if American racists have their way. Indeed, the fact that Obama isn't leading in polls by a wide margin "doesn't make sense ... unless it's race," says CNN's Jack Cafferty. This spectacle is grotesque. It reveals how little the supposedly objective press corps thinks of the American people -- and how highly they think of themselves ... and Obama. If the media were more objective, we'd be hearing a lot more about the racism at the heart of the Democratic Party (imagine if the black nominee this year were a Republican!). But such objectivity would cause too much cognitive dissonance for a press corps that defines "racist" as shorthand for Republican and sees itself as the publicity arm of the Obama campaign.