Madam, - A columnist with the reputation of Charles Krauthammer should be able to offer political comment without directing personal criticism at a presidential candidate's relationship with his immediate family. But Mr Krauthammer took the low road in his column on Monday and thereby demeaned himself as a journalist. Unfortunately, it is only what we have come to expect from him.
According to Krauthammer, Barack Obama "threw his grandmother overboard" in his speech concerning race last April - by which he means that Senator Obama sacrificed his grandmother (in some way) for political gain. But Obama only repeated an anecdote he had already described in his autobiography, Dreams from my Father, on how his (white) grandmother had once been frightened after being approached by a black man at a bus stop. Only by a stretch of the imagination can one see anything sacrificial about retelling this story.
Charles Krauthammer's contemptible twisting of Obama's attempt to advance racial harmony tells us far more about Krauthammer than it does about the senator from Illinois.
Elsewhere in his column, a profound discovery is announced: Senator Obama is (gasp!) a politician. As a politician, he has a certain amount of ambition, tenacity, wiliness and ruthlessness.
Krauthammer is so used to dealing with tentative and hesitant Democratic candidates such as Al Gore and John Kerry that he is scandalised to encounter one who (so far at least) has outfoxed his formidable opponents at every turn.
The real source of Krauthammer's fear comes in the paragraph where he calls election day the "day of revenge" for Democrats. Four years after Krauthammer and Co were talking about a "permanent Republican majority", they are facing the prospect of relegation to the political margins. Pardon me if I take a perverse pleasure at his increasingly hysterical rants against the dawning of that day.
If Barack Obama continues to shine as he has up until now, Charles Krauthammer will be joining George W. Bush on the train to political oblivion and historical ignominy. And good riddance. - Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE,
Balreask Manor,
Navan,
Co Meath.