How deep in the Obama tank is the media?

This deep. So fucking deep they'll get the bends if they ever try to slither out. That the Associated Press covered this at all is surprising, but I guess as one of the many official Barack Obama media outlets, they had to respond to Sarah Palin's comments about Obama's association with domestic terrorists. Rather than reporting simple facts, the article goes into the spin cycle right away:

While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, it's a stretch of any reading of the public record to say the pair ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts.

That last sentence puts words into Sarah Palin's mouth, a clear sign of AP taking sides. Palin never implied Obama was associated with Ayers during the days of the Weather Underground. Obama was something like nine years old when Bill Ayers was blowing shit up. Not only that, but it trivializes the nature of the connections between Ayers and Obama, which they detail just a bit more further into the article:

Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor. Obama left the board in December 2002.

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group of which Ayers was a founder. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.

So, Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Obama was its first chairman. That indicates something more than a passing acquaintance between the two. And when it came time for Obama to seek public office, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him in his home. Again, that takes more than a passing acquaintance.

If Obama just occasionally "palled around" with Ayers, I'd actually be OK with that. I sometimes "pal around" with people with whom I disagree completely on political matters.

Clearly, the nature of Obama's relationship with Ayers requires something more than a fondness for the same beer and sports teams. It requires an ideological affinity with someone who wipes his feet on the American flag, expresses no regrets over his past terrorist activites and doesn't think he did enough in those days.

Update: Via LGF. According to the AP, mentioning Obama's ties to domestic terrorists means you're a raaaaacist.