Frist Attack Update
AP reporter Karin Miller does a decent job explaining the allegedly race-tinged parts of incoming Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's record, though she does recycle the silly Sharp Pencils Incident and seems to come down on the side of it being a racial incident.

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, D-Memphis, who is black, said then that Frist "insulted the African-American community. Knoxville minister Harold Middlebrook, who headed the Tennessee Baptist Convention, said "they didn't make those statements in white communities. They only made those statements in our community. When they make those comments in our community, it becomes racist."

At least Miller notes that the Belle Meade Country Club, where Frist resigned his membership in 1994, is no longer an all-white club. Not even the New York Times bothered to mention that the club is no longer exclusionary, although Belle Meade Country Club now accepts minority members. Frist's resignation from the club is not evidence of some closet racism on his part. Just the opposite. In fact, it is not hard to see how the resignation of such a prominent member of the country club - Frist - because of its exclusionary policy, may well have helped push the club to alter its ways.

But the Center for Public Integrity strives mightily to spin the pencils incident as a racial remark, in part by paraphrasing what Frist said. And the Center's article mentions the Belle Meade Country Club but doesn't mention it now accepts African Americans and other minorities as members.

Frist also enraged black clergy and others during the campaign with allegedly racist remarks made in the closing days of the contest against incumbent Sen. Jim Sasser. The remarks surfaced after a November 1994 bus tour the Frist campaign took through a predominantly black neighborhood in Jackson, Tenn. As the bus pulled into the community, a young campaign volunteer reportedly told passengers, "We're getting deeper and deeper into the jungle here."

Of course, Frist did not make that remark - a young campaign volunteer did. But the Center for Public Integrity does its best to smear Frist as racist for words someone else said.

Frist himself reportedly asked for some of his campaign’s pencils to give to children in the neighborhood. But, Frist allegedly wanted unsharpened pencils, fearing that he might be “stuck” or stabbed.

No, Frist did not "allegedly" want unsharpened pencils. He directly asked for unsharpened pencils and his fear was not that he would be "stabbed" by a member of the audience, but that he might be "stuck" by a sharp pencil point as he handed them out.

There was nothing racial in the remark in any way. But the Center for Public Integrity really wants you to think there was.