The Wright Comeback Tour

But entrepreneur and HuffPoster Dave Winer says Wright is getting a bad rap:

"I think the silence comes from the fact that there still is some humanity in the press and in the blogosphere, and those who watched Moyers and really listened to Wright, realized that he's not a liability to Obama, he's an asset. At least some of the polish, the quiet confidence, self-respect, intelligence and grace we see in Obama must have rubbed off this man.

"Watching Wright gave me pride in being an American, and shame at the same time, for coming from a country so willing to objectify and [vilify] this person before checking out whether the characterization was accurate."

National Review says Wright is absolutely fair game and chides John McCain for objecting to a state party ad about the reverend:

"Obama's relationship to Wright is relevant to his judgment, character, and -- in his explanations of what he knew and when about Wright -- his honesty. Are we to ignore all this because Wright is black? Are only videos of white pastors damning America fit for airwaves? It's not Wright's race that matters, but his racist and anti-American rantings.

"We understand McCain's desire to steer well clear of any racial foul-play, but there's none in the ad and he's foolish to be pushed into the position of speech cop for every other Republican in the country. It's unclear what McCain's principled standard for criticism of Obama is. The Illinois senator has a closer relationship to Wright than former terrorist William Ayers, but McCain has seen fit to condemn the latter association. From now until November, any Republican criticizing Wright will be accused of playing the race card. It's a way to shut down discussion of Wright's poisonous worldview, and of what it says about Obama. These rules stack the deck and stifle legitimate debate. Republicans must reject them."

Andrew Sullivan questions the saturation coverage:

"Isn't it a relief, by the way, for the MSM to have a presidential campaign in which no issues are actually discussed? This Wright-stuff is amazing to me. It's all the MSM seems to care about. Even coverage of McCain is now about his attitude toward an unhinged black pastor from Chicago. Hey: it beats discussing war, debt, the economy, torture, and terrorism. Because it enables America to return to the classic boomer racial-cultural wars that are all the MSM truly knows how to cover."

On another front, Hillary Clinton and Obama have finally weighed in with criticism of the Pentagon's program of enlisting military analysts to push the administration's line, the Nation reports.

Arianna Huffington has picked a fight with me (or maybe it was the other way around) over what she calls the "self-loathing media" hiring prominent conservatives. The result is that I am "either very naïve, very disingenuous, or willfully ignorant." What a choice!

She wants the media to reflect liberal viewpoints, the way her Web site does. I'm not an ideological warrior, so I'm interested in fairness and balance.

She has, to put it generously, clarified her position. Of course she has no problem with the media hiring conservatives, just not the particularly awful conservatives that have gotten jobs lately. She'd have no problem with Arianna-approved conservatives.