Once upon a time, George Stephanopoulos had an unshakable claim to a seat in my personal political pantheon. Of course I have one. The real-life Sam Seaborn and undeniable young talent who stood with the likes of James Carville behind the 1992 Clinton phenomenon, Stephanopoulos was one of my chief inspirations to go into politics. Between the debacle that was the most recent Democratic presidential debate and sensationalizing punditry like this nugget that’s been making the rounds, I’m not sure what to think anymore.

We did ask a question I know in the exit polls about Reverend Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor and whether that was influencing voters. What did we find? Right down the middle. About half said it’s important, about half said it was unimportant. Of those who said it was important, look at this in Indiana, 70% went for Senator Clinton. Of those who thought it was unimportant, again right down the middle, 65% for Barack Obama. So what you thought about the importance of Reverend Wright basically determined your vote.

Really, George? I’m not charitable enough to assume that Stephanopoulos, despite all his extremely fancy education, still managed to find himself in a causal muddle with regards to these relatively simple statistics. To me, this kind of thing is far more indicative of a conscious effort on the part of smart people like Stephanopoulos to keep coverage of this race in the political gutter. The question I would truly love to have answered is why, oh why are they doing it?