Obama vetting

A great piece in The American Thinker on how the media's lack of vetting of Obama cost The Billary the nomination...

Deny it though she will, this galling reality cannot have escaped Hillary's awareness. As she watches the media devote its considerable resources to a smear and destroy attack on Governor Palin, Hillary must be seriously annoyed. And rightly so.

For during the last week-and-a-half we have been treated to an astonishing affirmation of how thoroughly our nation's impartial media can bird dog the tiniest, least relevant fact fact about a candidate, how quickly it can penetrate through the fog of time back to the beginnings of a politician's career, all with the laudable goal of testing whether the image the candidate projects accords with the record.

Where was this frenzy of journalistic zeal and competence when Barack Obama was building up an insurmountable delegate lead over Hillary?

Where were the media articles, digging into the earliest days of Barack Obama's political origins in the corrupt Chicago machine and the far left fever swamps of Hyde Park? Where were the articles explaining Obama's long, close and deep connection to unreformed Marxist revolutionary and proud domestic terrorist Bill Ayers?

Where was the in-depth series on how Obama came to his first prominent job in 1995 as Chair of Ayers' $100 Million plus Annenberg Challenge grant? Just what was it about Obama's views that made Obama attractive Ayers, so attractive that Ayers not only picked Obama to chair his grant, but gave Obama's kick-off party for the Illinois state senate in 1996?

Where were (are?) the articles on just how closely these two men worked together for at least four years (1995-2005)? On who received the grant money, what they did with it and to what effect?

And, even more crucially, where are the deep and nuanced media analyses of Ayres' views -- about education and other matters -- and how congruent Obama's are with his?

Where were the probing analyses of Obama's improbable claimed shock at his minister's racist and hate-filled ravings? Where were the mainstream media's interviews of parishioners (and others) in Chicago who could affirm or contradict that Obama was asleep during the Reverend's worst rants? Or the reverse -- that Obama in fact agreed with some or all of them?

Kind of makes you wonder how hard Hillary's going to work that Obama victory tour.