Frank Rich leads this week's list of Winners and Sinners

Just when you thought the Democratic primary campaign would never end, Tim Russert came on MSNBC early Wednesday morning and said: It's over.

It may take a little longer for Hillary Clinton to absorb that reality, but it's already clear that the second week in May 2008 was a turning point in the history of American politics—and not just because Barack Obama will be the first African American nominee of a major political party.

Equally important is the fact that a large majority of the primary voters in North Carolina, and nearly half of them in the Hoosier State (the final tally gave Indiana to Clinton by a sliver—just eight tenths of one percent) used their ballots to declare that the chance to turn America in a new direction really is more important than the rantings of Barack Obama's former pastor.

After the Obama deluge, die-hard Clinton supporters like Ed Koch declared themselves "shocked" that "none of the allegations, with the respect of Wright ... have had any impact on [Obama's] polling"—shocked, and, presumably, deeply disappointed. But for the rest of us this "shock" was one of the most heartening events in the recent history of the United States. Despite the overwhelming efforts of the Russerts and the Gibsons and the Hannitys and the O'Reillys to make this election into a referendum on Jeremiah Wright, a majority of Democratic voters have declared that the economy and Iraq are actually the things that matter most.

This primary campaign was filled with painful echoes of 1968, when Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy dissipated so much of the left's energy by attacking each other instead of the Republicans. But that year the contest for the nominee did drag on until August; now it's clear that it is ending right now. For that reason and many others, I believe the general election will most closely resemble the 1960 battle, when young people flocked to John Kennedy because he offered the chance for a dramatic break with the past, and the campaign ended with a razor-thin victory for the Democrats.

"The GOP's hope that the media will do its part to continue to degrade our political discourse this way is understandable. It is, after all, Matt Drudge who rules their world. A lowly, Rush-Limbaugh-created, right-wing gossip-monger is the Walter Cronkite of their era." —Glenn Greenwald

Arianna Huffington: McCain has "such a passion for Iraq—that's his Viagra."
Stephen Colbert: "I guess the warning on that should be, 'If your erection lasts more than a hundred years, pull out!'"

Winner: Frank Rich, for highlighting the continuing double standard between the media's obsession with Reverend Wright and the relatively free pass it has given McCain for his own religious skeletons, including Reverend John Hagee, who can be seen here comparing the Roman Catholic Church to Adolf Hitler. While he once denounced Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance," McCain has since cozied up to him and Pat Robertson—and that was after both of them blamed the 9/11 attacks on abortionists, feminists, gays, and the ACLU. Rich's bottom line: "It is disingenuous to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates—and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them—we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick."

Rich has also written a superb introduction to a new edition of Norman Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which is in the May 29 edition of the New York Review of Books. Mailer's book about the 1968 campaign is one of the best American campaign books ever written; New York Review Books is republishing it in July.

Winner: The magnificent Thomas Powers, for his exegesis of America's wars in the Middle East also in the May 29 edition of the NYRB. Powers thinks Afghanistan is just as hopeless as Iraq: "Regretting adventures in the Middle East is one of the constants of history. The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the French, the British and the Russians all sent armies and were forced in the end to bring them home again." On one point, I pray that Powers is mistaken: He believes that neither Obama nor Clinton will be capable of extracting us from these quagmires: "Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again?"

Winner: Bob Egelco, for reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle on sinners in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Democratic congressman John Conyers has complained to the DEA about "its increased use of 'paramilitary-style enforcement raids' and property forfeiture orders against medical marijuana patients and suppliers in California." With drug trafficking and violence from international cartels on the rise, Conyers asked, "Do you think the DEA's limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally under California law?"

Winner: Emily Wax, for reporting in the Washington Post on the new craze in India for skin-lightening creams. "Fair and Handsome" sells for about a dollar a tube and promises young male Indians the chance to lighten up a few shades, and, they hope, make them appear wealthier, and thereby attract a bride. Said one 18-year-old cigarette salesman: "I want to be rich and fair like my film hero. To be pale would make me be so smart."

Sinner: The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, for a silly study of Jon Stewart's Daily Show. The piece's masses of data obscure the essential truth about the program: Jon Stewart has better news judgment than most network news anchors, and his program provides more sophisticated information about everything from torture to the war in Iraq than any other "news" program on television.

Sinner: Mort Zuckerman and his nydailynews.com, for routinely linking readers back to its own website instead of taking them to the articles referenced by its columnists. For example, when news columnist Errol Louis quoted Jim Sleeper ("I would reserve a special circle in Hell for those who are gloating and smirking over Obama's pastor's self-immolation," said Sleeper), the link to Sleeper led readers back to Louis' column, instead of to Sleeper's post at Talking Points Memo Café. When Sleeper complained, this was Louis' response:

"The Web folks do that with every link—click on any hyperlinked name in the story and it takes you to recent stories we've done on the topic. The idea, I think, is to discourage readers from jumping off our website. Not in keeping with Web etiquette, I know, but eyeballs and ad revenue are important these days. I'd complain, but who'd listen?"

	Meet the Press (NBC–Russert)	Face the Nation (CBS–Schieffer)	This Week (ABC–Stephanopoulos)
White Men	1	2	1
White Women	0	0	1
Black Men	1	2	0
Black Women	0	0	0
Gay People	0	0	0

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. He has also written for Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, New York, The Washington Post, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, Details, Interview, The Advocate, Vogue, and Salon. He has taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton. To find out more, visit charleskaiser.com.