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The idea of making McGovern's birthday a day for Americans to apologize for abandoning Vietnam (and then Iraq?) gets some support in the blithe blindness currently on display, mirroring McGovern's erroneous past platitudes.

Obama has already done his imitation of Pontius Pilate by washing his hands of any responsibility for what he acknowledges might be Iraqi genocide.

Both the Tavis Smiley and CNN-You-Tube debates basically closed their eyes to the fate that would come from Surrender, Isolation, and Retreat (SIR).

A forum with audience questions tends to produce self-centered questions. John Roberts crowed positively about that on Sunday with Bill Schneider. They noted how Iraq and immigration were high on some lists of political issues, but low among the questions being submitted for Monday's debate. They called this an emphasis on issues that are "personal." Time's Joe Klein attacked this neglect of Iraq; and he attacked the Time narcissistic mirror cover for Person of the Year.

Tavis Smiley's debate was called mostly self-congratulatory (Howard U congratulating and celebrating itself) by the middle-of-the-road Iowa Press TV talk show. Reporter Mike Glover noted that Iraq and immigration were not discussed, something he considered awful. When a black woman called into C-Span the next day on Washington Journal and brought up immigration, Tavis bullied her by referring three times to the fact that she would not give her name; he said he'd have to call her "anonymous caller." He said immigrants do jobs that blacks and whites won't do. He ignored the fact, for instance, that blacks have been driven out of the hotel industry in parts of the East coast. As one commentator put it: The hotels want illegal immigrants to turn down their sheets and they want rich foreigners to stay at their hotels. I think the reason Smiley avoided and even attacked the very idea of bringing up the immigration issue is that he didn't want to have the differences between blacks and browns even mentioned.

Because of this, I have coined the phrase "pull a Tavis" for suppressing certain issues in a debate.

It has been observed that terrorism was not mentioned in the CNN and YouTube debate. Immigration was mentioned little. A C-Span caller the morning after the debate noted that when a question was actually asked on immigration (Should illegal immigrants get health insurance?), the candidate answering did not actually answer the question.

So CNN and YouTube pulled a Tavis.

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