Last night's edition of WTTW's Chicago Tonight featured one host, four local journalists, and a healthy dose of Obama-related hooey. Read on for a full run-down.
The "special discount"
The weekly panel discussion began on the trial of indicted businessman Tony Rezko and Stuart Levine's testimony this week, but quickly turned to Barack Obama and whether his candidacy will be affected by his relationship with Rezko.
For obvious reasons, Chicago journalists have devoted more resources and more ink to this story than their national counterparts. And so they should. It's their job to suss out the details and make sure all the local angles have been investigated. But as the apparent authorities on this story, is it too much to ask that they have their facts straight by now?
Apparently so. Take this exchange among the Chicago Tonight panel regarding Rezko's simultaneous purchase of a lot adjacent to the Chicago house bought by the Obamas in 2005:
JOEL WEISMAN (host): While we're still on Rezko, do you think people nationally grasp what happened in terms of the discount and the real estate deal that Rezko was able to provide?
DAVID MENDELL (Tribune reporter): I don't think they grasp the whole thing. But they do see that Obama is tied to someone who seems like a shady character. And that goes against his image as a clean government guy.
ANDY SHAW (ABC 7 Chicago): And the entire media found the Rezko story eventually: to the extent that everyone has heard it, everyone has seen the house in Hyde Park and the aerials, and everyone knows that he paid a lot less than Rezko for a similar piece of property.
Let me repeat myself: can we please put this one to rest?
As I explained in my previous post: while the Obamas paid $300,000 below the asking price for their house, there is no evidence that Rezko's purchase of the adjacent lot had any effect on the price the Obamas paid. Indeed, Shaw's assertion that Rezko paid more "for a similar piece of property" overlooks an important distinction between the two lots.
More after the jump ...
The Obamas were able to bid down the asking price for the house by $300,000 because they were offering the highest bids on that property. Rezko, meanwhile, would have had a tough time bidding down the price of the lot next door because, according to Obama, another individual already held an option on the property for the full price. So unless reporters like Shaw can come up with more evidence, the notion that Rezko graciously agreed to pay the full price for his lot in order to secure a discount for Obama simply doesn't make sense.
But it didn't stop there. Weisman went on to ask whether voters in Montana realized that Obama received a "special discount" thanks to Rezko:
WEISMAN: Do you think the guy who voted for him in Montana -- or wherever the last primary was out West -- looked at that house and said, "Oh yeah, he got that by some special discount with a pal"?
SHAW: The story wasn't really out there full-form by the time most everyone voted. I think it's only in the last few weeks when he sat down and truly came clean, as it were, that the story has actually come full-form. Rezko was a shadowy figure during the early primaries and had little significance.
I don't know if there are any Montana voters who think that Rezko saved Obama $300,000 on his house. I certainly hope not. However, the chances get better every time a Chicago media figure repeats this bogus claim, as it only increases the likelihood that a national journalist is going to do the same.
The Wright controversy
Following Rezko, the discussion shifted to the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Shaw asserted that Obama's former pastor would remain a "loadstone" on the back of the campaign and the Sun-Times' Maudlyne Ihejirika responded that this is "tragic" and represents a "new standard" for a presidential candidate. Whether the Wright flap will have lasting repercussions for Obama's candidacy is undoubtedly an issue worth discussing. But Weisman had to inject yet another falsehood into the exchange:
SHAW: He is trying to climb the highest mountain in American politics and I'm must saying, he now has a giant loadstone on his back as he tries to make it up.
IHEJIRIKA: I think that's tragic. I think it's tragic that it has become a giant loadstone, because we do not hold any other candidate up to that standard. Yes, he sat in those pews. Yes, his pastor is who is pastor is.
WEISMAN: I believe he said originally that he didn't sit there by the way. And then he changed his --
IHEJIRIKA: And that's the other thing. Exactly how controversial were the statements that Senator Obama heard at that time? The issue here is we are asking Senator Obama to distance himself from his church. Did we ask Senator Clinton to do the same thing? Did we ask the same of any of the other candidates that ran for president? I think this is a new standard.
We first observed this false assertion -- that Obama flip-flopped on whether he was in attendance for the Wright statements highlighted by the media -- when Lynn Sweet advanced it on her Sun-Times blog hours after Obama's speech on Tuesday. As we noted, it relies on a careless reading of Obama's comments about Wright both prior to the speech and during it. And sure enough, Sweet's misinterpretation subsequently spread like wildfire through the national media. It doesn't help when folks like Weisman continue to peddle it.
To David Mendell's credit, as the Chicago Tonight discussion progressed, he provided some important context regarding the environment at Trinity United Church of Christ and added that "it's a shame that this church has gotten this kind of reputation nationally":
MENDELL: He has a very liberal church there. He allows homosexuals to worship there. There are whites in the pews, where as you go to most black churches in Chicago and you don't see any whites. I think, if anything, it's a shame that his church has gotten this kind of reputation nationally. I think it's -- I don't think it's -- even though he --
WEISMAN: Is it a false standard, as she says, that we're holding him to?
MENDELL: I think so.
AP sportswriter Jim Litke then made an admirable, if flawed, effort to bring up the controversial statements by McCain's spiritual associates:
LITKE: It's not an entirely false standard because at some point I expect McCain's two whack-job religious guys will show up too. He's got --
WEISMAN: What does that mean -- two whack job religious ties?
LITKE: Well, he's got one priest -- not a priest, a pastor who introduced him at a campaign appearance who's got some crazy anti-Catholic speech, I think on video. And the guy who introduced him a month ago -- not Cunningham, but after the radio host -- another pastor with another completely off-the-charts theory about religion. And at some point, you know, if that becomes a campaign issue and we start dumping that stuff on the air and that becomes the basis by which we judge, Obama will probably look fairly moderate compared to some of the guys who have been tied to various campaigns.
I'm not sure how the media's hesitancy to highlight the comments of these two conservative pastors -- John Hagee and Rod Parsley -- supports Litke's argument that there's no double standard. He seems to assume that they're going to ultimately garner the same degree of attention so far devoted to Wright, which seems highly unlikely.
Nonetheless, he was on the right track by bringing them up in this context (albeit without the necessary details).
We'll be writing more about McCain's connection to Hagee and Parsley, and the media's relative lack of coverage, in the coming weeks. In the meantime, for more on Hagee's anti-Catholic rants -- and his claim that Hurricane Katrina was God punishing New Orleans for its sinning ways -- check out Archpundit's helpful compilations. For more on Parsley, who has compared Planned Parenthood to the Nazis and "called upon Christians to wage a 'war' against the 'false religion' of Islam with the aim of destroying it," check out Sam Stein at The Huffington Post and David Corn at Mother Jones.
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