Obama must rely on minions to rewrite history to dilute the effect of his worst gaffes

Here's the concluding paragraph of a New York Times report announcing that Sen. & Mrs. Obama have resigned their membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ:

Now that Mr. Obama has addressed his ties to the church and pastor in a long speech and fully broken with both, it is not clear what else he can say or do to ameliorate the continued concerns of some voters about those associations.

The answer is: There's nothing he can do to overcome the concerns of some voters. His resignation from Trinity now, coupled with his reluctant denouncement of Rev. Wright's historical and current remarks, amounts to a clear admission that what Trinity condones is toxic for a presidential candidate. But those particular voters — the ones who are paying attention — have already noted that Obama's relationship with this church has been longer than any other adult relationship except for his marriage. He's been a member of that church for many times longer than he's been either a U.S. senator or state legislator, for example.

Thus, there's nothing else he can say or do to fix this. Everything he says about it is likely to make things worse, in fact, for prospective voters who've been paying attention.

So he has to rely on proxies. Fortunately for him, he has lots, in institutions like the New York Times. And they will be his willing accomplices in rewriting history, at least to knock off the roughest edges. Even to the point of telling enormous whoppers. For example, from the same NYT story:

Mr. Wright, however, emerged from retirement in April and spoke at the National Press Club, offering deeper and broader criticism of the United States and using mocking language. Among other things, he opined that the United States government may have had a hand in creating the AIDS epidemic.

This paragraph is one of the most egregious examples I've ever seen of lying by omission.

What made Wright's comment so outrageous was not his suggestion that the government "had a hand in creating the AIDS epidemic," but rather that the government — the white U.S. of KKK A. government — had done so specifically to afflict blacks. The NYT's sanitized version suggests that Obama's multi-decade pastor accused the United States government of being inept; but Obama's multi-decade pastor actually accused the United States government of engaging in deliberate and covert genocide against its own black citizenry:

MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

WRIGHT: Oh, are you — is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't — based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the — one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

Describing Wright as suggesting only that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus, friends and neighbors, is a lie told by the writers (supposedly news writers, mind you) and editors and publishers of the NYT to rewrite recent history for the benefit of Obama's reputation among people who weren't paying close attention earlier in this election year. It's the kind of lie that ought to get several people fired, and indeed, drummed out of "professional journalism."

I shan't hold my breath waiting for that, though.

This entire episode involving Trinity and Wright would have ended the candidacy of any presidential front-runner, Democratic or Republican, in decades past. It's vastly more consequential, for example, than Edmund Muskie's perhaps-teary cheeks. In terms of actual fitness to be president, it's probably more meaningful than Gary Hart bouncing Donna Rice on his lap aboard the Monkey Business.

But what Obama learned from Clinton — Bill, not Hillary — is that if you're sufficiently messianic, you can brazen out almost anything. Being utterly shameless means there must not have been anything really very shameful after all — at least so long as your friends can be counted upon to sand off the roughest edges (i.e., to lie for you), and then to quickly change the subject.