BREITBART’S STORY ON OBAMA AND DERRICK BELL gets backing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The re-release of videos showing Barack Obama as a Harvard Law School student in 1991 speaking at a rally in support of professor Derrick Bell has so far occasioned little more than a yawn from academe. The late Professor Bell (1930-2011) is a reasonably well-known figure among those of us who follow racial controversies in higher education, but he is far from a household name. Moreover, there is a triple discount available on this purchase. The precipitating event was (a) long ago; (b) involved intemperate declarations by a student; and (c) requires taking seriously racial bombast by a black professor. These provide a neat package of reasons to put the matter aside as a pseudo-controversy.

That may, however, prove to be a mistaken judgment.

Well, a painted rock on property that Rick Perry’s family owned was grounds for a media feeding frenzy, but nothing about Obama’s background is any kind of news, apparently.

UPDATE: Reader Christopher Bertaut writes:

I have one small error to point out. Rick Perry’s family did not own the land that the offending rock was on, they leased it. You have to read through seven paragraphs of guilt by association in the original Washington Post story to finally arrive at the fact that Perry’s family did not own the land that the rock with “Niggerhead” was on.

Well, that’s what I get for relying on memory, even in an aside.