As many of you know, the combined forces of Drudge and Fox (and the Daily Caller) began trumpeting earlier today a major scoop: an earth-shaking, election-altering, Obama bombshell. Tune in tonight, etc.
Well now the story is out: “Obama’s Other Race Speech” is the headline at the Daily Caller and at Drudge, with Drudge teasing: “THE ACCENT… THE ANGER… THE ACCUSATIONS… THE SERMON…”
The breathlessness of the rollout seems to be predicated on the fact that even though the speech was given during the Democratic primary season in 2007 — mixed in among the endless loop of speeches, debates and forums that Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and others were doing at the time — the press missed it. Just totally ignored this racially charged speech one of the leading contenders gave the first week of June at a ministers conference at historically black Hampton University in Virginia.
But the Associated Press covered the speech. Brian Williams mentioned it that night on his NBC News broadcast. Maureen Dowd referred to it the next day in her New York Times column.
As for the new “revelations” themselves, they’re a reheated casserole of Rev. Wright, Obama talking black, and the shocking claim that the Bush administration’s indifference to the plight of New Orleans post-Katrina might in part be driven by racial bias.
Welcome back to 2008.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.