CNN:

Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black – coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness” to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview – indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed.”

David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. “When you wink and nod at offensive statements you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” said Axelrod…

Actually, Ms Ferraro probably didn’t go far enough. For it is almost painfully self-evident to anyone who has viewed this Democratic party nomination process in any way objectively, that a white male politician espousing exactly the same often half-baked platitudes as Sen Obama, would have long ago been eliminated from serious nomination contention. So why is he still around?

Draw your own conclusions. Ms Ferraro has drawn hers. Apparently she doesn’t have a right to do so, but Ms Ferraro is now reported to have responded:

…”Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says, ‘Let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world,’ you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California…

And it might well be said that Ms Ferraro knows a bit about why one is where one happens to be. She — at the time a little-known nationally member of the House, remember — was the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee. And why? Primarily because she was an acceptable woman, and most everyone realized that. Even then Rep Ferraro, who just reminded us:

…”I said in large measure, because he is black. I said, Let me also say in 1984 — and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times — in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president,”…

Clearly, though, her now nearly 24 years on pointing out the blindingly obvious has hit the Obama campaign in a sensitive place. Hence Mr Axelrod’s awkward attempt to change the subject to the appropriateness of her “offensive” views, as well as Sen Clinton’s supposed unwillingness to vouch for Sen Obama’s religion. And since when is that latter an opponent’s job?

Rather than either, or both, being the main issue, what we actually have here is yet another tiresome and troubling example of how we have seeking the nation’s highest office, a man who is deigned to be somehow above stinging — or even what some deem “offensive” — criticism.

Indeed, what is said is supposed to be only praise to the highest heavens. Anything less is decreed as “divisive” — …”I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive,” [Sen Obama] told the Allentown Morning News… — but speaking only for myself of course, I refuse adamantly even to consider supporting any candidate for any office whom it is decreed I shouldn’t criticize, or perhaps even “offend”. One would hope most other Americans would feel similarly.

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UPDATE, March 13: Naturally, the Clinton campaign folded like a tent on this one, too. Deal with global issues? Sen Clinton evidently can’t even deal with Sen Obama.

As for the latter, he doesn’t need another pillow. He has more of them than he could ever hope to use already.