Demagogue

Last week, conservative media reported what Howard Kurtz called "a thinly sourced story" that Sen. Barack Obama had been schooled at a madrassah. More from Kurtz's article in today's Wash Post:

Insight, a magazine owned by the Washington Times, cited unnamed sources in saying that young Barack attended a madrassah, or Muslim religious school, in Indonesia.

... Fox News picked up the Insight charge on two of its programs, playing up an angle involving Hillary Clinton. The magazine, citing only unnamed sources, said that researchers "connected" to the New York senator were allegedly spreading the information about her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The New York Post, which, like Fox, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, also picked up the article ...

Naturally. The Right sure knows the meaning of the word "coordination."

An spokesperson for Sen. Obama denied the charge that the senator attended a radical Muslim school as a child. And Clinton's spokespersons denied any role in the story. The Post story notes:

On Friday afternoon, John Gibson, host of Fox's "The Big Story," began a segment this way: "Hillary Clinton reported to be already digging up the dirt on Barack Obama. The New York senator has reportedly outed Obama's madrassah past ..."

Gibson's guest, Republican strategist Terry Holt, a former Bush campaign spokesman, said that the effort could be "a despicable act by an absolutely ruthless Clinton political machine" ..... There was no Democratic strategist on the segment ...

And this is the network that calls itself "fair and balanced."

It's only January of '07. This is going to get ugly.