VDB links to Howie Kurtz’ “breaking” of a real estate deal story involving Barack Obama and a now-indicted political supporter, Tony Rezko.

P.B. differentiates this story from the “silly mud,” as he calls it, of CNN’s Jeff Greenfield’s absurd comparison of Obama’s attire, during his recent trip to New Hampshire, to that of Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The real estate deal story first broke nationally, I think, on NPR on November 16th. (Audio is here.)

But, on November 5th, the Chicago Sun-Times piece that may have started it all ends with a point-by-point Q & A with Obama on the details of the deal. To me, after reading Obama’s responses, this seems pretty much like a whole lot of silly mud, too.

One thing about mud, though, is that it matters not whether it is totally silly, or mostly silly, or demi-silly, or… you get the idea. The press will cover it nonetheless. And will likely use it to create false equivalence.

It will be interesting, in a rubber-necking kind of way, to observe how/if this story continues to circle back around.

Sadly, I won’t be surprised if a leading sentence like “Barack Obama, not untouched by accusations of scandal in his own business dealings, claims to represent a new era of ethical political leadership” to accompany any bio of him.

Or maybe we can just count on the Nedra Pickler’s of this world to ape right-wing talking points by gratuitously referring to him by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, as she did in her AP an article on December 11th.

Or CNN to run split screens of Obama paired with bin Laden and Hussein…

Or how ’bout this headline, again from CNN: Is Obama a “Marxist leftist”?

Will “Is Obama an Islamo-Fascist?” be far behind?

SOMEWHAT RELATED UPDATE: The Carpetbagger has a very good response to Greenfield’s explanation of his ObamaWear Instant Terrorist Clothing Line piece.

Mr. Benen writes…

I like to consider myself someone with a fairly good sense of humor, and reading the transcript of Greenfield’s segment, I did not literally believe that the CNN analyst believed that Obama was going for the “Ahmadinejad look.”

Greenfield seems to have misunderstood why many of us were annoyed with his piece in the first place.

Greenfield didn’t just make an off-hand joke during an on-air discussion, he went to the trouble of putting together a lengthy segment in which he fleshed out his joke in great detail. This may have been a valiant attempt at humor, but as with many failed jokes, there was a problem with delivery — The Situation Room is not The Onion.

There’s also the political/media context to consider. A lot of Dems have seen the media participate in some ugly smears of Democratic presidential hopefuls, and despite his generally positive press thus far, Obama’s turn to get smacked around by objective news outlets was inevitable. Some on the right have already started to revel in the similarities between “Obama” and “Osama,” coupled by the fact that the senator’s middle name is “Hussein.” Right on the heels of this nonsense, Greenfield thought it’d be funny to compare Obama’s and Ahmadinejad’s fashion choices, playing into the notion that the Democrat has a great deal in common with our Middle Eastern foes.