Obama's Farrakhan Test

Latest: Obama flushed out, condemns Farrakhan.
UPDATE to UPDATE: RCP Blog on When Race Matters, and the double standard (Chicago Sun Times cover and Jesse's column today.) Steve Huntley is a voice of reason.
UPDATE: Video of Trumpeter Award Gala:Heavy hitting for Hillary from WaPo's Richard Cohen, "Obama's Farrakhan Test":

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan . Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism.

Finally this nasty Nation of Islam connection is making the MSM. Cohen goes on to discuss Farrakhan's offenses and his bringing the issue up with the Obama campaign:

Instead, as Obama's top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.

Fine. But where I differ with Axelrod and, I assume, Obama is that praise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes the view that its candidate, now that he has been told about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?

Well, yes. The only thing is though, Obama doesn't ever really get outraged about anything. It's not part of his cool, post-political persona. He doesn't get outraged about anti-Semitism in this case, or back in Illinois that aborted babies who miraculously survived were abandoned to die, or even about the scenario of nuclear attack on a major American city. Recall also that Obama had nothing to say on the Illinois Hate Crime Commission's fostering hatred, another Farrakhan incident.

He is curiously untouched. Kind of like Dukakis when asked in a debate (an unfair question but revealing) to imagine the rape of his wife.

Barack Obama is lofty and detached. That is part of his appeal, and that may be his downfall. HT HotAir.

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