I saw the video of this interrogation of Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com on CNN by Soledad O’Brien over the video of a then Harvard Law Review President Barack Obama embracing the late Harvard professor Derrick Bell followed by Harvard Law’s Charles Ogletree bragging about how he hid the tape during the 2008 election.

O’Brien began the interview dripping with contempt towards Pollak. By the end of the interview, the drips had crescended into a waterfall. All the while, Pollak remained calm, composed and erudite. Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of the interview I see Jay Thomas ask Pollak if he is afraid of black people. I think this is first time I’ve seen Thomas on television since he left Cheers twenty years ago. Was Bernie Kopell of The Love Boat not available?

The liberal media is going to learn real fast that they are going to have their hands full with Joel Pollak. Back in April 2009, I saw Pollak make mincemeat out of Barney Frank at the Kennedy School of Government. Pollak may not fill the shoes of Andrew Breitbart but he can certainly fill his own and then some.

With that said, I do have some concerns. It appears that Breitbart.com will be releasing more video of Bell. I’m not sure how wise it is to dwell on Bell. I say this because Bell died less than six months ago and this could be seen as picking on someone who cannot defend himself. Pollak calls Bell “the Jeremiah Wright of academia”. While Bell and Wright might have been in simpatico, according to Stephan Thernstrom of Harvard, Bell wasn’t a firebrand in the way Wright is. And if the American people weren’t dissuaded by Obama’s preacher then I doubt they’ll be dissuaded by Obama’s professor.

That is unless the folks at Breitbart can show a direct link connecting Bell’s Critical Race Theory to President Obama’s policies be it in the Justice Department and elsewhere. If Bell is part of Obama’s intellectual development then I think it is more important to establish how Bell’s thinking has shaped Obama’s policies rather than to cast him as a new Reverend Wright. If people are going to change their minds about Obama it is going to be because of things he’s done during the presidency of the United States, not the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.