The lead story on the oft-conservative website “The Drudge Report” today is that the Vice-Presidential debate moderator and Simmons College grad Gwen Ifill is releasing an “Age of Obama” book on inauguration day. This has everyone all up in arms that the debate moderator will be biased towards Palin, and any “tough” (normal) questions she asks will be clearly demonstrating that bias.

Well, the real story is that her book is NOT called “The Age of Obama” as Matt Drudge would have you believe. It’s called "The Breakthrough," and it’s about the rise of black politicians in general. Hell, Colin Powell has his own chapter. Of course she would be stupid to leave out Obama as the only black candidate every on a major party ticket, but now everyone’s pouncing on her for alleged bias.

Can you write a story about the rise of a particular race’s political power, and not have it be a glowing endorsement of a candidate? Yes, of course you can, and anyone suggesting otherwise is probably two steps away from saying something extremely offensive (“Why is she moderating the debate? She’s black so she’s obviously pro-Obama”). Gwen Ifill serves on the board of the Harvard institute of Politics and the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, I think she’s more than qualified. Critics of her and her book are on some thin ice if they really want to press this critique. Hopefully the Republicans won’t be dumb enough to make this an issue before or after the debate.