On Slate today, a column by Christopher Hitchens under the wrong headline, namely, “Why Romney Needs to Talk About His Faith.” Wrong, because Romney’s need to talk is Hitch’s secondary point. Hitch’s primary point: that journalists need to ask. To wit:

According to Byron York, who has been riding around with Romney for National Review…[m]ost journalists have tacitly agreed that it’s off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenets of the Mormon cult…. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one….
So phooey, say I, to the false reticence of the press and to the bogus sensitivities that underlie it.

You don’t have to agree with Hitch’s decision to call Mormonism a “cult” to agree, wholeheartedly, with his assertion that the journalists covering Romney have proven, in this matter, astonishingly passive and compliant. The boys (and girls) on the bus need to start doing their jobs