Obama’s media (Part I)

Obama senses our anxiety and promises change. He’ll bring us together and lead us to a better place. Just believe (and vote).

Obama’s political coalition is made up of African Americans, young people, guilty white liberals and the national media. They’re all working hard to elect Obama, especially the media.

Even some fellow travelers are worried about the press corps’ unabashed favoritism. ‘‘We very much hope that ‘historic’ doesn’t become the default adjective used to describe Barack Obama ... By prefacing any mention of the Obama campaign with words like these, the press effectively turns Obama into a symbol instead of a candidate,” writes Justin Peters in the Columbia Journalism review.

Sorry, Justin, it’s too late. That train left the station months ago, just ask Hillary Clinton. The Democratic primary was ‘‘historic” due to gender and race but also because it was the first time the national media ‘‘called” a primary at mid-point.

‘‘I have been impressed at the mainstream media manipulation and outright partisan interference in the Democratic primary,” writes Ronald Maxwell in the National Review Online. ‘‘One doesn’t have to be a fan of the Clintons to see what’s going on — the overt attempt by the mainstream media to anoint a presumptive nominee months before primary elections are held and decided. Since early February, all of MSNBC and most of CNN has not only declared Obama as winner, they have been an echo chamber for Obama’s campaign to urge Clinton to drop out...”

But that was just a warm up for the main event. Media bias in the Obama-McCain tilt is truly breathtaking. For instance, behold the media’s racial trick bag.

As usual, the media appointed itself the election’s censor and rule maker. And here are the rules: Race may only be discussed positively and anyone who votes against Obama is ‘‘under a cloud of racial suspicion,” as the Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy puts it.

So it’s OK to write ‘‘the hopes and yearnings of millions of black voters have become singularly dependent on Obama’s striving” (Washington Post) or Obama’s victory will be ‘‘a significant victory over racism” (Baltimore Sun) or ‘‘it can redeem American history from the specter of race that has plagued us for nearly 400 years” (Washington Post) because using race to elect Obama is a good thing.

But using race to question Obama is strictly out of bounds, a personal foul, intentional use of racism. When Ralph Nader correctly but clumsily pointed out that Obama is tailoring his rhetoric and image to white voters (‘‘talking white,” said Nader) the Washington Post spent an entire editorial calling him a racist. Ralph Nader a racist? Get real!

Likewise, when anyone questions Obama’s foreign policy expertise, ‘‘... I occasionally catch a racist undertone in this kind of conversation,” writes Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, who’s totally in the tank for Obama.

See how it works? Question Obama’s credentials and you fall into the racial trick bag. Same goes if you question Obama’s wife or his minister or his voting record.

Obama has already declared any criticism of Michelle Obama out of bounds no matter what she says. And the media is enforcing Barack’s decree. Michelle’s quip that her husband’s campaign is the first time she’s been proud to be an American was dismissed as ‘‘an insignificant tongue slip” by the media.

And here comes the racial trick bag — if Mrs. Obama’s comment offended you, you might be a racist. ‘‘Now some critics have turned to Obama’s ‘feisty’ wife, whose image as a tall, strong, confident black woman can perhaps be made to seem threatening to some people,” writes the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson. So, disliking Mrs. O puts you under that ‘‘cloud of racial suspicion,” according to the media umpires.

And it’s going to get worse. Between now and Election Day, the media will portray Obama as a racial martyr assaulted by the Klan, skinheads, neo-Nazis and other low-lifes. Every time some jerk yells a racial epithet or spray paints an Obama billboard it will make headline news.

Witness this Washington Post news story by Eli Saslow, ‘‘Sen. Barack Obama’s historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity ...”

A few days later the media headline was ‘‘Vandals Tag Cars With Anti-Obama Messages.” Turns out some idiot in Orlando, Fla., spray painted 60 cars with anti-Obama messages. They left anti-McCain messages, too, but that didn’t make the headlines.

By November the media will have the U.S. divided into two groups; first, those decent, upright Americans who — as their patriotic duty — must rescue the country from hate and intolerance by voting for Obama and second, the followers of David Duke.

But, of course, this election isn’t about race.

Blair Lee is CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring.