Another Extremist...the "New Party"....ho hum, Does Anybody Really Care?

Stanley Kurtz, who is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has been doing extensive research on Barack Obama's political affiliations and activities in Chicago. One of his more recent articles discusses the fact that Barack Obama was a member of (and endorsed by) a political party called The New Party. Stanley Kurtz is baffled by the media's lack of interest in this story. He asks:

"Isn’t the membership of a major party nominee and currently favored candidate to become president of the United States in a third party a major news story? Is it not the height of press irresponsibility to ignore this fact? Now some folks might be disturbed by Obama’s New Party membership and/or endorsement, and some may not. But isn’t this something the American people are entitled to know and decide on for themselves?"

The more you read about this, the more you realize that Barack Obama's blithe dismissal about his ties to William Ayers and ACORN (and the media's bizarre refusal to scrutinize these ties) is more than disingenuous. It's a total distortion of reality. Indeed, even more recently, it's been learned that the L.A. Times is actually refusing to release a videotape that shows Barack Obama toasting and praising yet another anti-semite extremist, Rashid Khalidi. Here's what Gary Bauer wrote about this in yesterday's End of Day report:

The media’s bias in this campaign is absolutely unprecedented, and it has now reached an unbelievable new low. We knew going into this campaign that their coverage would be slanted toward the Democrats. But now it appears that the media are actually working to protect Barack Obama and hide the extent of his associations with radicals like William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi.

You know about William Ayers, but Rashid Khalidi is another radical who, like Ayers and Obama, found refuge in academia. Khalidi is a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, but he previously worked at the University of Chicago, where he and Obama met.

Khalidi is well known for his anti-Israel comments and his vehement objection to our friendship with Israel. When Khalidi left Chicago to work at Columbia, Obama attended a dinner for Khalidi and offered a toast in his honor. The Los Angeles Times wrote about this going away party in April based on a video tape of the event. Here’s an excerpt of the paper’s April column:

“A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking. His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been ‘consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation…’”

Remember, this report was based on a video tape. In recent weeks there have been repeated demands for the Los Angeles Times to release the tape which shows Obama toasting an anti-Israeli “scholar” while others compare Israelis to terrorists. But contrary to the interests of a free media and an informed public, the paper is refusing to release the tape and is essentially protecting Obama.

In the last week or so some members of the media have been sounding the alarm about the extent to which the media seem to be protecting Obama from scrutiny. It maybe too little too late, but if Obama gets elected, it's likely this will become a story in and of itself. A San Diego Union Tribune editorial suggested as much yesterday when they wrote, "Decades from now, when The Lifetime Channel does a special on “Great Love Affairs of the 21st Century,” the first entry is sure to be the Barack Obama-national media coupling of 2008. What's going on now is simply stunning."

For Further Reading

Here's his book.

Here's a link to info about Stanley Kurtz's articles.

Here's a Wikipedia discussion of the New Party

Here's Stanley Kurtz Bio


Stanley Kurtz, an NRO Contributing Editor, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution with a special interest in America's "culture war." In addition to his regular contributions to National Review Online, Kurtz's writings on the family, feminism, homosexuality, affirmative action, and campus "political correctness" have appeared in Policy Review, the Wall Street Journal, and Commentary.
Before turning his attention to America's cultural battles, Kurtz was a social scientist specializing in family life and religion. He received his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University and later taught at Harvard, winning several teaching awards for his work in a "Great Books" program. Kurtz was also Dewey Prize Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Chicago. Kurtz has published extensively on family life, child rearing, religion, and psychology in various parts of the world — particularly India, where he did his field research.