It is great fun watching the mainstream media turn against the Clintons with a vengeance. For once, the shoe is on the other foot. The spectacle is especially entertaining for conservatives, since the media has been treating the Clintons with a disdain to which Republicans have grown accustomed for the past twenty years. The Clintons fall from grace with their formerly reliable enablers has been sudden and swift. Confused, in desperation, they keep reaching into their bag of old tricks that had served them so well in the past, only to be rebuked by a turncoat media, from whom they had received nothing but adulation for years, but who now greet their predictable prevarications with derision and laughter.

Stunned and stupefied by the alacrity with which their most steadfast allies in the mainstream media have deserted them, the Clintons just don't get it. In the identity politics game of the Democratic Party, race trumps gender every time. Obama is the media's new golden boy.

In terms of Obama's stated policy preferences, from the perspective of the mainstream media, what's not to like? For, Obama at heart, is a transnationalist, an abortion absolutist and a big government liberal.

Here are a few of the talking points that we can expect the media to proselytize endlessly and predictably throughout the remainder of the Democratic nomination and into the general election:

Once Obama started his 11 state primary winning streak, he became the new object of the media's adoration. Consistent with their desire to insure he captured the nomination, many journalists began asserting that since Hillary could never overtake him in pledged delegates, super-delegates were duty bound to honor the "will of the people" and hence, Obama should be the rightful nominee. Any result at the convention inconsistent with this scenario would mean the election had been stolen from the Democratic Party's first viable African-American candidate. Those who loudly proclaim that Obama should be the nominee conveniently ignore the fact that in order to capture the nomination, the successful candidate must capture 2,024 of the pledged delegates. While many argue correctly that Hillary cannot possibly reach the magic number of delegates going forward, what bears repeating is the very unpleasant reality that many refuse to acknowledge: neither can Obama.

In short, the view that Obama is "entitled" to the nomination due to his lead in pledged delegates is wholly at odds with the existing procedural rules of the Democratic Party. No less an Obama partisan than Nancy Pelosi felt the need to supply those who subscribe to this erroneous view with a corrective when she belatedly stated that, yes super-delegates may indeed vote their conscience and are not bound by the votes of the pledged delegates.

The operative strategy of the Obama campaign from its inception has been to conceal and mythologize. The myth-making began at the outset of the campaign and was largely successful. College crowds and mainstream journalist were positively enraptured and enthralled with Obama's uplifting rhetoric and calls for Unity and an end to divisiveness. And, what better vessel than to realize these lofty dreams than a successful candidate of mixed heritage. However, the mythology could only be successful if the unpleasant reality of Obama's rise as a politician in Chicago could be contained and concealed. Thus, was Reverend Wright unceremoniously but prudently "disinvited" from Obama's campaign kick-off festivities. There is no better example of the twin pillars of conceal and mythologize in action than the response to the Jeremiah Wright imbroglio.

It was only when the racist rantings of Obama's preacher became public that the containment strategy became fully operative. The twin prongs of the Obama campaign strategy were brilliantly employed in his response to the Wright controversy. His speech was heavy on all of the high-minded and uplifting rhetoric that is so instrumental in the maintenance of the myth of Obama as the Unifier and Healer, but it also supplied the post-modern concepts of contextualization as justification for his long-term association with Jeremiah Wright. Thus, with his speech did he attempt to maintain the myth but also conceal or diminish in importance his association with an anti-american racist. With their over the top praise of his speech, the media bought hook, line and sinker, Obama's explanation of how a purported racial healer and national unifier could voluntarily associate with a church which preaches black liberation theology and whose pastor had some very unkind things to say about white people. For them, there is nothing more to explain; the matter has been settled. As such, any further attacks on Obama's association with Wright will be deemed "divisive" with a heavy sub-text of nascent racism. For many in the media, the speech was not only a necessary, but a sufficient explanation for his twenty year association with a scurrilous pastor. For those who don't subscribe to this view, the response will be the same: Obama said he doesn't agree with his pastor's inflammatory comments, what more can he say?

However, Obama was too clever by half and the Wright controversy will continue to be a problem for his campaign.  Expect the media to characterize any revisiting of the issue in the general election as "swift-boating". Many journalists and media commentators will decry focusing on the Wright issue as a "distraction" to other more important issues that need to be discussed in the general election.

The problem for Obama as well as his media cheerleaders, is that it's not what Obama says, it's what he has done that risks jeopardizing the carefully crafted myth of his being the embodiment of a Unifier as well as a practitioner of a new kind of politics. Scant as it is, there is nothing in Obama's record as an Illinois State Legislator nor in his voting record in the United States Senate that is consistent with this assertion that he can reach across the divide and unite people. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that the exact opposite is true. And, therein lies the central contradiction of the Obama candidacy. The reality of Obama is inconsistent with the lofty and vacuous rhetoric. Indeed, that is precisely why the rhetoric must remain vapid and vaporous. How the media sustains the myth in light of the continuing and unflattering disclosures of his actual record remains yet to be seen.