New York magazine points out the latest - and utterly predictable - effort by Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee to spin his false claim that President Obama grew up in Kenya: blaming the media.

Huckabee made the outrageously untrue statement during a radio appearance on Monday, later telling CNN that this was a “misstatement,” and that he meant to say that Obama grew up in Indonesia. Media Matters pointed out several holes in this defense.

From New York magazine:

So Huckabee, whose credibility and reputation have taken a major hit, went back on the same radio show today to clear his name. His argument was the classic fallback of people lacking a convincing defense: It's the media's fault.

[...]

Huckabee added that he “worries about the future of journalism in this country,” but the interview itself was a journalistic horror show. Host Steve Malzberg was an ostentatiously sympathetic interrogator, and never forced Huckabee to explain how Obama's years in Indonesia have anything to do with Kenya's colonial history or Obama's Kenyan relatives. He didn't ask Huckabee why he claimed that Obama “probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather” despite the fact that Obama grew up with almost zero contact with his father or paternal grandfather.

Those are the salient questions here. The media isn't out to destroy Huckabee. The media is confused and even disheartened because it does recognize that Huckabee had never before tried to portray Obama as a scary foreign Other. Now he is doing it explicitly. Additional remarks Huckabee made on a different radio show today clearly demonstrate that pernicious attacks on Obama's very Americanism is the objective.