On Thursday night, kid oakland posted an exceptionally good diary at Daily Kos about Hillary Clinton's attack on Barack Obama for attending the Trinity United Church of Christ. (He's always a good diarist, but this is one of his best.)
The only thing that I would add to his diary, which focuses on the Pennsylvania debate, is a reminder that Clinton made the initial attack sitting in front of Richard Mellon Scaife, the leader of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that sought to destroy the Clintons in the 1990s. Timothy Noah documented the exceptional hypocrisy of that moment:
"Hate speech [is] unacceptable in any setting," Hillary Clinton today told the Tribune-Review. We turn now to this excerpt from a 1981 Columbia Journalism Review profile of Scaife by Karen Rothmyer, in which the reporter describes a conversation with the distinguished publisher and philanthropist:
"Mr. Scaife, could you explain why you give so much money to the New Right?"
"You fucking Communist c*nt, get out of here."
Well. The rest of the five-minute interview was conducted at a rapid trot down Park Street, during which Scaife tried to hail a taxi. Scaife volunteered two statements of opinion regarding his questioner's personal appearance—he said she was ugly and that her teeth were "terrible"—and also the comment that she was engaged in "hatchet journalism." His questioner thanked Scaife for his time. "Don't look behind you," Scaife offered by way of a goodbye.
Not quite sure what this remark meant, the reporter suggested that if someone were approaching it was probably her mother, whom she had arranged to meet nearby. "She's ugly, too," Scaife said, and strode off.
Simply put, if given the choice between a candidate who worships at a church with a minister like Jeremiah Wright and a candidate who forms a political alliance with Richard Mellon Scaife, I'll take the former every single time.
© Jed Lewison