Rachel Maddow nails it

The McCain campaign loves to focus on Barack Obama's "exotic" person, his "celebrity," or whatever you'd like to call it.

Rachel Maddow, in this segment of tonight's Road to the White House, nails Jay Carney of Time for suggesting that Obama's "unknown" to Americans. Take a look:

Let's reexamine what Rachel says:

There's a story to tell about John McCain, though, that makes him just as unknowable. The guy with nine houses. The guy with $520 shoes. The guy that dumped his first wife and married the beer heiress...

He's been on the scene for a longer time, but how many people know he has nine homes? How many people know he has $520 shoes. We don't focus on John McCain because people don't report it with the same intensity and fervor that they report every personal detail about Barack Obama and what he eats for breakfast.

Having watched Rachel this whole year, I don't think she wants to get into this back and forth discussion on a topic of so little substance.

But I think what she was getting at is valuable. The media and its punditocracy play dumb when pondering the question they so often ask: "Why is Barack Obama not winning in such a Democratic year?" How do they do this? And why are they doing this? They offer the standard "he's an unknown politician," "he doesn't have a core," or, if you're Pat Buchanan, "he's exotic." Perhaps, as Rachel suggests, the traditional media is complicit in this very uneasiness they're reporting with Obama.

Thoughts?