An interesting excerpt from Bob Herbert in Saturday’s NY Times. It seems Reverend Wright and bitter Pennsylvanians are fair game:

Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy. While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily. The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can’t be ignored by the press.

But later on in the column Herbert writes:

Wednesday night’s debate in Philadelphia may have been a sorry exercise in journalism, but even many of Senator Obama’s own supporters were disappointed with his lackluster performance.

If Wright and bitter-gate “raise legitimate concerns,” why is asking questions about them a “sorry exercise in journalism?”