If you dealt with constant criticism that your publication and others of its ilk were basically a thinly disguised front for the Democratic Party, wouldn’t you steer clear of an article written in the form of a memo to Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama?
If you answered yes, you would not be an editor at Newsweek, whose latest cover story (“A Memo to Senator Obama“) contains a lead paragraph featuring the line “if an Obama adviser were writing an honest memo to the candidate, here’s how it might read….”
In Newsweek‘s defense, at least editor Jon Meacham undercuts the argument we’re bound to hear in the fall: only a racist wouldn’t vote for Sen. Obama.
An important nuance: for those who support either Hillary Clinton or John McCain, the more precise and more useful way to frame the
question is not whether America is ready to elect a black man president
but rather should the country elect this black man president. This is a
significant point, and it is critical that we bear in mind that one can
be for McCain [or for Clinton] without being racist.
Let’s hope we don’t have to remind Meacham and his colleagues of this point later this year.
