Today, in a posting on his “Rough Sketch” blog at the Washington Post Dana Milbank perpetrated one of the most grotesque examples of hatchet journalism I’ve seen in a while. I’ll get to the particulars soon enough, but first it’s worth setting a little context.

Milbank was reporting on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the National Press Club this morning, a speech that marked the third public appearance of Barack Obama’s former pastor in the last couple of days. The first appearance came on Friday, when Wright appeared in a PBS interview with Bill Moyers. The second came yesterday, when he spoke at the Detroit NAACP’s Freedom Fund dinner.

The Moyers interview was so uncontroversial that one commentator had to wonder why we hadn’t heard more about it. But the question-and-answer period after today’s Press Club speech gave the media just the kind of thing it was waiting for. Joe Klein of Time said that “Wright’s purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself–the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton–and destroy Barack Obama.” Amy Sullivan, also at Time, said bluntly that Wright’s performance at the National Press Club “can only be described as a political disaster.”

Only small-t time will tell if Sullivan is right–one sign she’s correct is that Obama is already inching his way onto the denounce-and-reject road. [UPDATE 4/29: The inches have become miles.] But it only takes one look at the transcript of Wright’s appearance at the Press Club to see that Klein’s characterization of it as “racial extremist spew” is ridiculous.

Milbank’s post is worst of all. (more…)