Like Some Dark Angel

highwayscribery will stake claim to the "San Diego Union-Tribune" correction box this morning given that we alerted them to the original error.

It reads:
"In his March 18 Opinion column, "Generation Obama? Perhaps not," William Kristol cited a report claiming that Sen. Barack Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama campaign provided information showing that the senator did not attend Trinity that day. Kristol acknowledged the error in a subsequent correction. The Union-Tribune regrets the error."

Undoubtedly.

The article itself continues to run without the correction and highwayscribery has a sense that is not the only place this bit of disqualified information can be found on the Internet.

We contacted the times "public editor" Clark Hoyt asking him to confirm the "Union-Tribune's" claim it received the correction under separate cover. Thus far we have an automatic response, which came on Tuesday.

It is the scribe's hunch they're not interested in discussing the matter. Here is their e-mail address if you want to give them a push: public@nytimes.com

highwayscribery's time in newsrooms has taught that errors of this type are raised the status of sin and if you don't buy into it, you can't work at a news outlet. It is unlikely that something quite so egregious as Kristol's poor work would have been treated so blithely, with "The Times" casually sending out files of the discredited work without fair warning.

Toxic things, after all, are usually carried in special containers.

Obama made an "error" too, and he's been answering for days now, undergoing and endless extrapolating and tea-leave reading into his being based upon somebody else's speech.

Nonetheless, it is hard to deny Obama has cemented his status as a national leader turned to with much attention to give substantive, almost conceptual address on race in America.

His enemies are certainly there, but his considerable base appears sustaining.

For all this media hoo-ha and ganging up on this angel of darkness, Obama continues to gain fresh support in a tough moment for himself personally and the campaign.

Both continue to receive worthwhile and informative coverage worthy of a new political force on the national scene such as this profile on the generation of middle class, black professionals whom so identify with him.

And for people who know how things work, he continues to pad his delegate lead into something insurmountable.

The damage from a kind of three-sided Clinton-McCain-Media assault has taken its toll on Obama whom, one gets the impression, is going to have to fight this battle with the supporters he already has, because his name is largely mud to those he could not reach on his own terms.