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But any credit Salon deserved for publishing real reporting instead of a hatchet job or a swoon got drastically diminished when some errant editor described the early Obama as “uppity” in the story’s subhead. (That racially charged adjective has since been changed to “smug.”)
McClelland on 2000: “I got my first sight of Obama early that winter, at a church in the South Side’s Bronzeville neighborhood. It was a Saturday afternoon–as a greenhorn challenger, Obama wasn’t getting the Sunday pulpit invitations–and maybe a dozen people were scattered in the worn pews. Obama was a mere two-term state senator, and this was half a decade before ‘-mania’ was added to his name. Weak December light strained through the stained glass. Obama wore a suit and tie–he hadn’t yet pioneered high-fashioned, open-necked campaign casual–and, posing uncomfortably before the baptismal, tried to relax the crowd with self-deprecating wit.
