ABC has a new story on this silly 'controversy':

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,’’ Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’ Mr. Davis was alluding to comments that Mr. Obama made Wednesday in Missouri when he reacted to the increasingly negative tone, and negative ads that have been coming his way from the McCain campaign in recent days. “So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,’’ Mr. Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Mo., in remarks that he echoed throughout the day. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.’’

ABC thinks it has gotten to the essence of the 'controversy':

[David] Axelrod told ["Good Morning America" Obama's comment] meant, "He's not from central casting when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He's new to Washington. Yes, he's African-American."

ABC very helpfully generated the goofy illustration above of a cheerful Obama on the 100 dollar bill. Presumably it's meant to show what a sorehead Obama is for complaining that anybody is picturing him unflatteringly on US currency.

What ABC does not acknowledge is that is exactly what McCain's campaign did one month ago.

In this mocking advertisement released on June 27, McCain's campaign pretended that Obama wanted to put his face all over American icons, including the 100 dollar bill. It's not a flattering picture, as this still shows.

Apart from suggesting that Obama is arrogant, it strikes me as an exercise in illustrating how out of place he would be in the presidency. Obama looks slightly dazed or hesitant, and the very white T-shirt like thing is both jarring and heightens the contrast with his skin color.

And just in case that wasn't sufficiently scary, the McCain campaign turned Obama's visage into this ghoulish image just before cutting away. As the 100 dollar bill image grows large on the screen, bright lights begin to stream out of his eyes, his face turns a deathly yellow and finally explodes in a burst like fire.

You would have thought that a simple fade would have been a heck of a lot easier to produce.

Obama was exactly right, McCain was trying to make him look scary. What's ABC's excuse for trying to make him look like a fool?