After watching the debate tonight, I was thinking that it might be a useful exercise to compose the ultimate mainstream media debate question for Barack Obama: that is, a question so shiningly perfect in its sublime triviality, so comprehensive in its treatment of the full range of standard absurdities, and so slavish in its obedience to right wing themes, that once asked no other question would have to be asked of the Democratic candidate from now until November.  Here is my best attempt at such a question:

Senator Obama, suppose you were locked in a room with  Jane Fonda, George McGovern and Louis Farrakhan.  And suppose Jane Fonda stole your flag pin and was about to drop it into an official Communist Party dumpster purchased in Hanoi; and suppose George McGovern stole your gun and was about to melt it down and forge it into a peace sign medallion to give as a gift of appeasement to our Cuban enemies; and suppose Louis Farrakhan was about to boil a newborn white baby in its own blood, and then mail the cooked infant to a mosque in Tehran.  And suppose you could only save one of them.  Would you save the flag pin, the gun or the baby?

And before answering, could you tell us if you said the Pledge of Allegiance this morning?  And tell us how many dozens of Bibles are in your house on a typical weekday?  And do you admit the Rosenbergs were guilty?  And did your parents know Alger Hiss?  And did you ever take acid and roll in the mud at Woodstock?  And will you take this opportunity to reject and denounce hip hop, Angela Davis, Willie Horton, welfare queens, Rodney King, the Detroit public school system, Malcolm X, busing, Sonny Liston, crack, that crazy guy Samuel L. Jackson played in Pulp Fiction, ebonics, Dennis Rodman, Spike Lee and every other frightening Negro or Negro-ish thing in America?

That should just about cover it.