There has been a bit of talk about a 2006 video clip that just made it into the news. It shows Obama praising his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a stump speech and explaining how he “stole” “audacity of hope” as his book’s title, e.g., “But I tell you what, I’m confessing to all of you here today — it’s a big crowd, 2,000 people — I’m confessing in front of the TV cameras: I actually stole this line from my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.”
No big deal — other than the suggestion that there is now less interest in systematically airbrushing the president’s past. If Obama’s polls keep sinking, I think we might have a strange sort of media confessional, almost a delayed make-up for the 2008 campaign in which journalists no longer feel so invested in a candidate so low in the polls, and begin reexamining what failed to interest them in the past. Who knows, medical records, undergraduate transcripts, or the LA Times quarantined Rashid Khalidi tape might find their way to the public domain once journalists stop feeling the need to be employees of the ministry of truth.