Photo by EricaJoy A recently completed mural of Barack Obama in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Since the story broke several hours ago, current information is now that four members of a White Supremacist group have been charged, although it's not even clear at this stage if they've been formally charged regarding an attempt to assassinate Obama. Clarity of information isn't exactly shining through. So far what we have are some guys, a girlfriend of one of the guys, a sniper's rifle, some methamphetamine, and a join the dots process, with the words assassination attempt as the working description of the story. Frankly, we're at the Where's Waldo coloring-in stage, and it reflects no credit on the news sources. That’s another flying grenade for the political arena, and the US media seem to be playing coy on the subject. Politically, this is a possible nuke in detonation. If this really was an assassination attempt, this could decide the election. It’s very true that some people can be judged by their enemies. If the public perception is that these are Obama’s enemies, that could make up the minds of a lot of people who have been looking both ways. Current polls are literally neck and neck, and a real push one way or another could be the final decider. It's hard to imagine anything more likely to generate decisions than an assassination attempt. The political reporting has been interestingly ridiculous. The story is currently nine hours old. CNN has an article on skimpy cheerleader skirts in the US section, but nothing on the assassination story. (Note this is the CNN front page. At the time I looked, there was literally nothing, not even in the DNC coverage.) The New York Times has an early story, but it hasn’t been updated. This is the current Google news search page for Obama assassination attempt. There are 881 stories at last count on this subject. Of all the major American mainstream news sources, the LA Times seems to have managed to be current. Their unconfirmed information is that there was in fact an intention to carry out an assassination attempt. Details are to put it mildly sketchy. The LA Times blog news is that the idea was to assassinate Obama on national television. The agencies have it. AP definitely has it. Xinhua has it. But it’s a pretty strange mix when the Daily Nation in Kenya is running more actual information than CNN. In fairness to the media, however little they deserve it, they may have been waiting on hard information. Less impressive is the implication that they may also have been waiting for guidance regarding what to say about it. That is perhaps a good analogy for the political problem. The nation’s media is currently seen as being in lock step with one side or another in this election. Anything and everything in the media is seen as an indicator of political positions. Obama has made a career recently of being a colossal spanner in the political world. His assassination, theoretical or otherwise, would be an even bigger spanner. The Republican Party doesn’t need to be fighting a martyr. The Democrats don’t want a dead hero. The American public can hardly be expected to tolerate euphemisms, about even an attempted assassination. So far what’s being assassinated is the tolerance of the electorate. That the US media has to do a dance step or two before handling something as serious as a possible assassination attempt is obscene enough, but if this were a real attempt, it would be unforgivable. Some of the people don’t like being fooled, any of the time. If they have to go to Kenya to get information, they're likely to like it a lot less.