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Questions about character are only appropriate if they are directed at GOPers

By Jack Kelly

When John McCain first ran for Congress in 1982, a fund raiser was held for him at the home of a prominent Phoenix businessman. As a young man, the businessman took part in the bombing of several abortion clinics. One of the bombings caused several deaths. Despite this, the businessman has never expressed remorse for the criminal acts of his youth. Sen. McCain and the businessman have remained friendly. Until a few years ago, they served together on the board of a local charity.

You haven't heard about this relationship before because I just made it up. But if it were true, I suspect most journalists would find it newsworthy. Very newsworthy.

But not when the shoe is on the other foot. The two most unpopular people in journalism this week are Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC, the moderators of last week's debate between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Theirs was "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years," said Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher magazine. "Shoddy and despicable," said Washington Post media critic Tom Shales.

It was "something akin to a federal crime," said Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker. "I am still angry at what I just witnessed, so angry that it's hard even to type accurately because my hands are shaking," said Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

Mr. Bunch and the others are furious with their ABC colleagues because they asked Sen. Obama about the remarks he'd made at a San Francisco fund-raiser demeaning rural Pennsylvanians, and about his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres.

The questions were a distraction from the "real issues," the journalists said. "At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Sen. Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly friendly, and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel," said Michael Grunwald of Time magazine.

The odds are you hadn't heard about Bill Ayres until George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Obama about him. Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois—Chicago, Mr. Ayres joined the Weatherman domestic terror group in 1969, and took part in bombings of several police stations and the Pentagon. He became a fugitive after a bomb he and his associates were planning to place in the Fort Dix officers' club exploded prematurely, killing three. While on the run, Mr. Ayres married fellow terrorist Bernadine Dohrn. They turned themselves in 1981, but charges against them were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

In an interview with the New York Times published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Ayers said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Mr. Ayres lives in the same Hyde Park neighborhood as does Sen. Obama. They met in Mr. Ayres' home in 1995, when Barack was first running for the state senate. They were introduced by State Sen. Alice Palmer, who was vacating the seat to run for Congress.

"When I first me Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends in their own minds, Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn," wrote Maria Warren on her blog in 2005. "They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread." Sen. Obama and Mr. Ayres have remained friendly. They served together on the board of the Woods Foundation. Both spoke at a testimonial dinner for Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO spokesman who is now a professor at Columbia University. (Mr. Khalidi is another of Sen. Obama's circle that journalists covering his campaign don't think you need to know about.)

Sen. Obama said his relationship with Mr. Ayers is inconsequential because he was only eight years old when Mr. Ayers was planting his bombs. Most journalists agree. Questions about character are only appropriate if they are directed at Republicans.

But Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman disagrees: "His comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols," he wrote Sunday.

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