Hoyer, Steele, slavishly - The double standard, yet again...

Over at The Corner yesterday, Kathryn Jean Lopez noted the comments from Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer on Republican Senatorial candidate Michael Steele. Hoyer, speaking at a political event on Sunday, "told the audience that [Michael] Steele had had 'a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.'" Today, she's posted a note from a friend of hers. K-Lo's friend writes:

My own take on the Hoyer “slavishly” flap is a yawn. I don’t think he had any ill intent; I also think we need to be consistent on the issue. Conservatives stuck up for Washington D.C.’s director of the Office of the Public Advocate when he used the word “niggardly,” and rightly so. And I think we need to stay consistent in the absence of any evidence of racist beliefs by Hoyer.

I’m as partisan as the next guy, and I’m always happy to use opportunities to highlight the failures of political opponents. But this isn’t one of them.

As far as that goes, I agree with it entirely. No question about it.

The incident warrants comment, though. Not because of what he said. Not because it makes Hoyer look bad, or makes him out to be a racist. No, it warrants comment because it is yet another example of the double-standard that the mainstream press presents. How many barrels of ink did the Washington Post, and other mainstream outlets in this country, waste on the George Allen 'macaca' flap? Of course, Allen's a Republican.

Conservatives shouldn't be using this event to claim that Hoyer's a racist, but they absolutely should be using this event to continue hammering on the Post and the NY Times for their outrageous partisanship. If Bob Corker had made a comment about Harold Ford "slavishly supporting the Democratic Party," does anyone really believe that the left, and the press, wouldn't take it as prima facie evidence of racism?

Of course they would. So conservatives should absolutely be hammering this story. But they shouldn't be hammering Hoyer, just the media...