Now, in a remotely rational world, the last few days should have effectively ended Ben Carson’s presidential campaign. A man whose entire argument is based on his amazing (too incredible, really) biography has been revealed to have, at best, exaggerated and possibly fabricated important elements of that narrative. But instead of having his conservative support collapse, the conservative media (led by Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Drudge, Breitbart, etc) has mostly rallied to his side or remained strangely silent, and Carson says he has raised over $3.5 million because of the attacks from the obviously biased liberal mainstream media.

Now, it is very important to note that I 100% agree with Carson that if similar allegations were made about President Obama’s biography (they have been, but about far more substantive issues) that the mainstream media would totally ignore them or, if that didn’t work, label them racist. As my documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected concluded, if Obama’s highly suspect life narrative had faced the same level of scrutiny as Carson is facing in the mainstream press, Hillary Clinton would have already been elected president in 2008.

There is absolutely no doubt that Carson is being treated very differently because he is a conservative and even more so because he is black (and therefore a threat to the media’s entire worldview). The media’s standards for engagement are simply far tougher on conservatives than on liberals. This is just not debatable, but those are the “rules” which the news media has created.