If you are a news organization and in your coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign, you continuously profess that you’re “Keeping Them Honest™”, shouldn’t you disclose the backgrounds of the “ordinary people” you trot out to ask questions of the candidates at a televised debate? Apparently not at CNN.

I watched the latter part of the Democratic debate held in Las Vegas (watching it on my HDTV was a mistake, but that’s another posting) and I heard the questions being asked by the audience members. Sounded like died-in-the-wool Democrats asking favorable questions of the candidates. In other words, what you would expect at a single-party event. No surprise.

Well the fact that the people being presented as ordinary citizens, just like you and me, are not. They appear to be activists. Nor do their questions appear to be their own.

Khalid Khan, the Muslim man who asked the question, well asked is a stretch - he was making his opinion known and wanted the candidates to play along, Khalid Khan is the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada. Eric Scheie writes:

OK, I have no way of knowing the extent to which Mr. Khan has been subjected to profiling. But he is not an ordinary citizen. For years he has been a prominent Muslim leader — the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, who has hosted conferences like this one (which included the controversial Muzzamil Siddiqi), and the first sentence in a piece in the LA Times described him as “a stalwart among Las Vegas Muslims.”

Eric also includes a transcript from a CNN special that featured Mr. Khan. (What I wouldn’t give to see Wolf Blitzer do the Shatner impression from Star Trek II.)

I digress. The first “ordinary citizen” to ask a question of the candidates was one Catherine Jackson, who in the guise of asking a question, fanned the flames of fear in how the evil George Bushitler was beating the bloody drums of war with Iran… Got carried away there, sorry. She wanted to know what they Democrats were going to do in order to protect her son, who served in Iraq three times. She fears he’s going to be sent to Iran.

She’s an ordinary mom with her son standing silently behind her. (And my mind runs amok with images of overly-protective mothers not letting their boys grow up to be men…) You can hear the national anthem and smell the apple pie. Dan Riehl finds that she’s a Nevada activist, too.

Now when have I heard that before? How about in May. Thank you Harry Reid.

“My son was in Iraq three times,” said Catherine Jackson of Las Vegas. “I thank God he’s home now. Enough is enough. We need to bring our troops home.” Reid spokesman Jon Summers said Move America Forward was mischaracterizing Reid’s position. “It’s their right to make their feelings known, but most Nevadans agree with Senator Reid that it’s time to change course in Iraq,” he said.

CNN is doing a great impression of the Black Knight from the Holy Grail. Add in questions about CNN’s “independent” analysts, James Carville and David Gergen, both former employees of the Clintons, and it’s more than a flesh wound. CNN’s Democratic debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas was a circus act second only to CNN’s horrific YouTube debate. Where was the snowman, man? Even UNLV’s Rebel Yell, the student paper, saw through the shiny lights and scripted spontaneity.

Keeping them Honest, eh?

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