The Times' editorial in today's newspaper is relentlessly critical of the Obama administration for forcing out Shirley Sherrod after she became the target of a bogus, right-wing smear campaign.

Fine. The administration is clearly fair game.

But note that the harrumphing Times editorial is completely silent about Andrew Breitbart, the man behind the character assassination plot. The Times also turns a blind eye to the rest of the right-wing, get-Obama media mob that, late Monday afternoon, was out to get Sherrod and concocted the entire sorry story.

This is remarkable. Even now, even after this high-profile saga involving a transparently mean-spirited attempt to railroad an innocent government employee with yet another round of rude and crude race baiting, the New York Times editorial page is still playing dumb about the role of the hateful right-wing media, and still refuses to single it out for ridicule.

Instead, it's the Democrats' fault.

UPDATED: Firedoglake notes that on the news side, the Times has tread lightly when describing Breitbart's role in the Sherrod fiasco.

UPDATED: TPM's Josh Marshall has much more today on the mainstream media's general reluctance to call out the right-wing media mob, even now:

It's much easier to focus on Obama or Vilsack or 'what it says about race in America' or whatever other nonsense. Because most reporters are simply cowed by Fox and Breitbart and Beck and the rest of the organized forces of bamboozlement -- too afraid, too bewildered, too hapless to apply anything remotely approaching standards in analyzing the fourth estate of which they are the nominal custodians. So what we get is this 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak not at all' routine from reporters and journalists who should know better.

Or, as we asked last week, at what point does Fox News' ugly race baiting become the story?