Bowing Down at the Altar of the New York Times

Last week, Bill Keller, the outgoing editor of the New York Times, proposed a series of questions concerning religion to the Republican presidential candidates (he follows up with a blog post on the topic here).

Of course these questions are borne only out of the finest moderate sensibilities of Keller, who wants to bring these topics up in order to generate a serious national discussion on these important issues.  This just makes itself so much more apparent when he opens the column by implying that one's religious opinions and one's opinions on the likeliness of space aliens occupies the same intellectual space.

But here are my questions for Keller:  Where was this in 2008 in vetting the Democrat candidates?  Where are these types of questions for Democrats period?  Where was this during the Jeremiah Wright controversy?  Where are other cultural questions for Democrats like, for instance, on abortion? 

To be sure, there is nothing wrong in asking candidates questions about their religion, because it is a very important part of many Americans' lives.  But to only ask one side, to tout the implicit lines of reasoning for the other side, and to mindlessly obscure these important questions for the gain of a certain party is appalling.  I would say that the Times should know better than this, but the plain truth is that they don't and don't care.