Just some random venting for the moment; maybe something else later today that is more spiritual or more entertaining.

There are a couple Christian blogs I frequent that are, let’s say, a bit more conservative than mine. I like them fine, because often on doctrinal matters we agree on most points. But in this political season, I’ve had to limit my visits to those sites because I’m tired of the repeated claims that Sarah Palin (and somehow John McCain, too) are getting savaged by a “liberal media” and “left-wing bloggers” and that Barack Obama is some golden boy who’s getting nothing but love and who “hasn’t been vetted as much as Palin.” I don’t want to let my anger color my attitude toward these bloggers.

Sometimes, people’s ability to go into deep denial and manufacture fantasy scenarios amazes me.

Obama has been campaigning for a couple years now. He’s had Rezko thrown in his face repeatedly (and that’s coming up again) even though he answered that issue quite thoroughly. He had to endure having out-of-context soundbites of sermons by his then-pastor played over and over and used to support idiotic arguments by people who either never bothered to watch the sermons in their entirety or ignored the real message because informing the public about the real message would have messed up their lies.

Obama has had people digging into records to try to prove he wasn’t really born in America (though his mother was a U.S. citizen so that wouldn’t matter anyway) and to try to prove he went to radical Islamic schools and to even question whether he’s really Christian.

He’s had to deal with people trying to make like he’s good buddies with former domestic terrorist (who long ago served his time and is an upstanding citizen these days) Bill Ayers, while completely ignoring that plenty of conservative Republicans have served with this very same man on the same board Obama did.

People have tried to claim Obama has no experience, even though he is a constitutional law scholar, former community organizer in the third-largest city in the country, a former state legislator and a current U.S. senator.

People have dug around trying to find a mythological video of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey.”

And the list goes on, I’m sure, but I’m exhausted to think about it anymore.

And yet, poke around about whether Sarah Palin had any real major duties as mayor of little Wasilla, point to her own pregnant teen girl as possibly evidence that her abstinence-only stance is flawed or that her family values maybe aren’t so tight, or mention that she’s only been a governor for two years and in a state with less than a million people, and she’s being treated unfairly. Catch her flip-flopping on issues like the “Bridge to Nowhere” and people are being mean. Discover that her husband once had a DUI, and that’s getting personal. Mention that she has associations with scary pastors and churches, and that’s out of bounds. Point out that her husband and she have recent direct ties to an Alaskan secessionist group, and that doesn’t matter.

I know of at least one Christian blogger who believes that all the negative stuff about Obama is something that has to be “dug up” with lots of research because the media won’t cover it, while Palin is being gleefully destroyed.

Forgetting that actually, all the crap and lies about Obama have been circulated quite widely, and often by mainstream media. A lot of the stuff being dug up on Palin isn’t lies but truth…and the stuff that might be questionable (like whether she should be held accountable for what her pastors say) is either equal to what Obama has had to deal with, or gets dropped from media coverage far more quickly than any of the Obama stories did.

Forget also that Obama actually knows the issues and Palin can only spit out soundbites. Ignore the fact that while people try to smear Obama’s wife, Cindy McCain has never really been hounded about how she avoided jail for stealing drugs though her position with a non-profit to feed her habit, or the fact she keeps passing off other people’s copyrighted recipes as her own family fare.

No, let’s continue with the myth that Obama has been getting an easy ride and ignore the fact that it is actually McCain, through most of his campaign up until recently, who has been handled with hero worship and kid gloves my a mainstream media that has loved him for years.

Because why deal with reality when we can wrap ourselves in comfortable lies?

I know that Obama isn’t a saint. I think he’s a pretty upstanding guy and I respect that he has a pretty together-looking family life. I like that he succeeded on hard work and talent and not handouts and legacies. I like most of what he stands for. But I know he’s a politician and someone with his own ego and agendas, like any politician. But it’s amazing to me that everyone has to dig so hard to find even rumors and innuendo about this man, and often come up with flat-out made-up stories instead, while it is so easy to find ugly truths with the members of the Republican ticket, and yet somehow Obama is the one who hasn’t been vetted enough.

It’s madness. Look, if you don’t want to vote for him because he’s black, or pro-choice or whatever, just admit it already, damn it. Stop trying to make a fictional case for some vast media conspiracy to tar and feather McCain-Palin and give Obama-Biden a ride.

This is the Internet age. This is the era of blogging. Shit is dug up and disseminated in an instant. There is no privacy.

And the fact is, most of what’s getting dug up on Obama for two years now is easily proven false or misleading. Yet what is coming out now, only in the past few months or weeks, on McCain and Palin that is scary is actually, in most cases, true. Obama may have skeletons in his closet, but if so, he hides them better than any other politician running for president ever has. And if he’s that good, maybe we really do need him in charge. But chances are that he just ain’t that dirty.

Sorry, conservative conspiracy theorists. In this case, at least, you’re the ones with the loony notions. Get back to reality please.