Public Eye

It's small beer, journalism scandal-wise, this matter of the L.A. Times running that Photoshopped picture Thursday from the Eye Ranians depicting a fake-successful version of their dud missile launch.

Desperate for a shot that wasn't a video screen capture, lots of other photo editors promoted the same pic, moved late in the day by Agence France Presse. In hindsight, it was a little too good to be true -- the missiles all look the same, as do their angles of attack -- but deadlines will force decisions on a Page 1 editor.

No, the scandal I mean is the failure to see the genius behind this apparent dis of Barrack Obama by Jesse Jackson -- you know, the one in which Jackson whispered on "Fox & Friends," supposedly thinking that he was off-mike, that he'd like to . . . er, emasculate the junior senator from Illinois for "talking down to black people."

Now, I wouldn't know "Fox & Friends" from "The Huntley-Brinkley Report." I don't watch the network, which you can't trust farther than you can throw Roger Ailes. But I caught the clip on the Web, the aside to another guest about Jackson's supposed anger at Obama for his recent speeches at black churches about the need for two-parent households.

A perfect ploy. Who's the big ego moderate and conservative whites and African Americans love to hate?

Jesse is.

So what better way to gin up support among the undecided for the presumed Democratic nominee for president than having the Reverend J. lay into him?

It's been too long a political season already. But moments like this make it all worthwhile.