Do you see the emerging pattern? Barack Obama is being treated with kid gloves by the mainstream media. Here is the latest example. Do you recall puff pieces like this about George W. Bush when he was seeking the Republican nomination for president in 1999? What you had were reporters digging up dirt on him, trying to discredit his candidacy. Why do you suppose the media are going easy on Obama? I think it’s more than ideological compatibility. I think it’s racism. Racism means deploying a double standard, one for one race and another for others. We’re used to thinking of racism as treating people worse than they deserve on account of their race, but it’s also racist to treat people better than they deserve on account of their race. We know that progressives think it’s impossible to criticize affirmative-action programs without being a racist. This keeps them from criticizing black people such as Obama. If they do, they’ll be accused by their fellow progressives of racism. Was it George W. Bush who coined the term “soft bigotry of low expectations”? That’s what’s happening right now with the mainstream media in their coverage of Obama. If they truly respected the man, they’d treat him the same way they treat white presidential candidates.