KEY POINTS:
A million New Yorkers read a hard copy every day of the grand dame - the New York Times. Many would have been unlikely to spot the story buried at the bottom of page fourteen in Tuesday's edition. The sober headline in smallish type said: 'Arrests in Plan
to Kill Obama and Black School Children'
Two misfits from the guns and God rural towns of the south, Daniel Coward, 20 from Tennessee and Paul Schlesselman, 18 from Arkansas were arrested after authorities discovered their plans to go on a racist killing spree that would culminate with the murder of Barack Obama. They wanted to kill the man who this time next week is likely to the first black elected President of the United States. His turn would come only after they'd killed 87 others, including 14 black school children.
By early Tuesday it was the second most read story on the CNN website. Ditto across the world at the Sydney Morning Herald's site. Rupert Murdoch's New York tabloid, The Post covered their front page with the story. Even the Times of London put the story on page three.
The threat to America's likely new President was big news around the world
But not in the New York Times - the most influential newspaper in his country.
The Times editors' decision tells us much about the real, unspoken dread, within the United States over what could happen to the first black president. Four US presidents have been assassinated - Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and John Kennedy. His brother Bobby was on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination when he too was assassinated.
Can any Western politician be more at risk than a black, liberal heir to the Kennedys, in a country with a long history of racial violence, far-Right activism and boundless guns?
Understandably, the hearts of most Americans skip a beat whenever a threat to Obama is emerges.
True, the arresting authorities in the latest incident strongly doubted the ability of the pair, small town outcasts who met through a white supremacist internet site, to carry out their plans. They had the guns but not, it seems the brains.
Had the authorities judged the threat to have been greater, I suspect The Times would still have resisted a much more prominent placement for the story. The reason; they know the threat to Barack Obama is just all too real from America's poor white backwaters - awash with guns and loathing. The fear is not what was uncovered in Tennessee this week.
It is what remains.
Giving less recognition to such madmen at least slows their spread. The New York Times deserves thanks for telling. And not shouting.
