I’m impressed with Rod Dreher’s effort to smear Obama through equating his pastor with Farrakhan:

The deeper valence here, I would suggest, is that Barack Obama is benefiting from a racial double standard — one that is present in other areas of public life. In other words, the Rev. Wright problem is not really about the Rev. Wright, but about whether Barack Obama is being given a special pass because of his race. Let’s be honest: no white candidate could be involved with a church that gave a lifetime achievement award named for its pastor to a man, Louis Farrakhan, who has called Judaism a “gutter religion,” and called people of other races “devils,” and not face a hellacious media firestorm. Nor should such a white candidate be given a free pass. Republican candidates have been criticized for speaking at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, which is associated with racist practices (they won’t allow interracial dating) and with strident anti-Catholicism. But no Republican candidate has ever identified Bob Jones Jr. or Bob Jones III a spiritual mentor.

It’s extraordinarily disingenuous for Dreher to draw a (tenuous) link between Farrakhan and Wright, and then tether Obama to the former by equating Farrakhan with his pastor.  Newsflash, Mr. Dreher; Louis Farrakhan is not and has never been Senator Obama’s “spiritual mentor.” 

It’s really not that difficult to understand.

Update:  Glenn Greenwald rightfully asks why no one has called attention to John McCain’s embrace of radical extremist pastor John Hagee.