Making sure not to note the idiocy of the right-wing attack on Obama's school speech, the WashPost, like most Beltway news outlets, carefully avoids telling the truth about this brain-dead controversy. (See that journalism trend detailed here.)

Today's Post headline:

President Seeks to Avoid Politics in Speech to Schools

The headline is flat-out inaccurate. There's no proof Obama today “seeks to avoid politics in the speech,” because there's no proof Obama ever contemplated including politics in the speech in the first place. That allegation was manufactured by the right-wing and has always been based on nothing but run-away paranoia. Period.

Think of it this way. Imagine right-wingers had launched an hysterical crusade about how Obama was going to scare school children with a speech about invading aliens. But then the White House released the text of the speech and--voilà!--no mention of invading aliens, would the Post then print up a headline, “President Seeks to Avoid Aliens in Speech to Schools”?

The sad part is, considering how the press now willingly allows itself to be led around by the GOP Noise Machine, I'm afraid the answer would be yes, the Post would publish that headline.

UPDATED: The Post also plays nice with the right-wing nuts in this passage:

Republicans have called Obama's back-to-school address an inappropriate political intrusion into the classroom.

Again, flat-out inaccurate. Republicans didn't merely complain the speech was inappropriately political, they claimed Obama was going to “indoctrinate” kids with his “socialist” agenda. They compared him history's tyrants and mass murderers.

But at the Post, reporter Scott Wilson knows to clean up the craziness and to present Obama's “critics” as concerned and thoughtful, rather than hateful and unhinged.