With God on His Side

The Tribune's Public Editor, in response to reader complaints, runs the numbers. Granted, Obama is the home town hero, so I cut them some slack. After all, I have certainly devoted a lopsided number of blog posts to the Big O--nearly all negative of course. Still, the Tribune numbers are startling:

I asked Tribune researchers to catalog all front-page headlines, lead paragraphs and photos with each of the three candidates' names and images over the past 12 months.

Here are the raw numbers: Obama was cited first in 93 front-page stories in the last year, Clinton in 80 stories and McCain in 39 stories.

So, how much does that tell us? Just a little. It certainly suggests there was more interest in Obama as the campaign heated up. Most stories in the last year focused on daily campaign coverage or reports on larger issues that included the other candidates.

The Tribune had been writing about Obama, the hometown candidate, for several years, including breaking the news about his relationship with indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

(Before the Illinois primary, the Tribune's editorial page endorsed Obama and McCain for their respective party nominations.)

In the survey of front-page photographs, Obama again came off first with 40 images, Clinton was shown in 34 pictures and McCain appeared 21 times. In a half-dozen instances, Obama and Clinton were shown together at a debate or other television appearance.

Of course some of the Tribune's articles show Obama in a less than flattering light, but I think after he finally met with them to answer questions on Rezko they went easy on him. And one reader pointed out this:

Michael Haber of Chicago wrote that a March 4 front-page photo displayed "a smiling Barack Obama illuminated by a bright light from above. The obvious, but subtle suggestion was that G-d somehow endorsed the candidate."

Well, yeah. This is news?

UPDATE: Obama now says he would have left his church if Wright hadn't retired--well easy to say--why didn't he say or do anything these last 20 years, hmm? Quite the agent of change--rather an agent of intolerance. And Obama blames "ethics of greed" for the economy, then:

Not long after he left the stage, the Democratic presidential hopeful attended a fundraiser held by his campaign in a room in the Manhattan headquarters of Credit Suisse, one of the major investment companies caught up in the subprime lending mess.

While the fundraiser was not sponsored by the mortgage lender, Obama’s dual appearances highlight a challenge for all three of the remaining presidential candidates: convincing ordinary citizens they have the right formula for fixing the economy and enough independence from the nation’s financial mandarins to push it through Washington.

Jim Geraghty with more on Obama's hypocrisy, and another unfortunate comparison that reeks of his characteristic self-importance.