Topic: Newsmax
A March 5 Newsmax column by Ronald Kessler begins:
It’s one thing for Barack Obama to have a minister, friend, and sounding board who supports and admires Louis Farrakhan and whose church gave him an award.
It’s another thing for Obama to dissemble about it.
Kessler then adds:
If John McCain’s minister, friend, and sounding board gave an award to white nationalist David Duke, would Obama have said the gesture showed “insensitivity” to blacks, or would he have issued a searing condemnation expressing outrage?
Nowhere does Kessler mention that McCain has been endorsed -- with McCain appearing on stage accepting the nomination -- by John Hagee, an evangelist who has made numerous derogatory remarks about Catholics, gays and women that would seem to call out to be denounced -- by both McCain and Kessler -- in the same manner that Obama has denounced Farrakhan.
Shouldn't Kessler hold McCain to the same standard he holds Obama?
Kessler falsely suggested that the only statements Obama has made on the issue of Farrakhan was one in which Obama said the decision by a magazine published by the church he attends to honor Farrakhan was "is not a decision with which I agree" and that it "showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community." But Obama has also said that he has been a "consistent denunciator of Louis Farrakhan, nobody challenges that."
By focusing on the guilt-by-association link of Obama through his pastor, Kessler ignores Obama's clear denunciation of Farrakhan -- which McCain has never done with Hagee.
