As always, Glenn Greenwald is worth his weight in gold. Whatever Salon is paying him, it’s not enough. Today he tackles what I’m terming "the immaculate McCain smear." It is a well known fact here in South Carolina, that in the 2000 primary, McCain became the victim of a racist smear campaign which suggested that his adopted daughter, whom he and his wife adopted from Bangladesh, was actually an illegitimate child McCain had fathered with a black woman. And yes, that kind of racism still plays big in South Carolina (where we only recently removed the confederate flag from atop the state house).
The author of the smear was none other than the Bush campaign, which was fighting back after McCain’s victory in New Hampshire. And yet, following McCain’s victory in the recent SC primary, as various journalists have mentioned the prior smear campaign, none have bothered to actually mention that it was the sitting president and his campaign staff who orchestrated it.
I’m not sure exactly how it’s possible to condemn an act without actually condemning the person responsible for it, but somehow, our elite press corps has found a way. Wonders never cease.
