Bob McCarty Writes

While Monday marks the 44th anniversary of the first heavyweight boxing match between Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay), it’s a photo from their May 25, 1965, rematch that has generated a great deal of interest on this blog and should have — but, unfortunately, has not — generated at least cursory interest on the part of political pundits, writers and reporters covering the 2008 presidential race.

The photo in question (at right) was the subject of a post, Photo on Obama Web Site Raises Questions, published on this blog five months ago. In that post, I explored the possibility that strategists behind Barack Obama’s presidential campaign were trying to communicate a subliminal message(s) through one photo* (at right) which appears on the Democrat front-runner’s campaign web site.

Many mainstream media wordsmiths have included mentions of Obama and Ali in the same pieces (for examples, see here, here, here and here), though I have found none to date who’ve seen fit to mention — more less speculate about — the possibility that the Obama campaign is trying to communicate some sort of symbolism through it’s publication of the photo in such a manner.

As a journalism-degree holding political junkie who’s been involved with the news-gathering process during most of the past 20 years, I find it astounding that today’s members of the Fourth Estate find no inherent news value in the photo. Virtually screaming for a headline is the fact that the front-running Democrat presidential candidate openly associates himself with a former draft dodger and Muslim convert during a time when the United States finds itself at war with Islamic terrorists on several fronts. When one factors in Obama’s at-least-occasional Muslim upbringing and his father’s strong Muslim faith, the photo’s news value increases substantially.

There are, of course, many other reasons why I find a lack of coverage on this topic astounding, but I won’t rehash them here. If you want to review them, read the aforementioned post.

*To see a photo screenshot showing the photo in the context of how it appeared on the Barack Obama campaign web site, click here.