I’ve read about 50 stories this morning on the U.S. Senate’s refusal to seat Roland Burris as Illinois’ appointed replacement for President-elect Barack Obama. Not one of those stories mentions that Burris is black and that Democratic leaders, by barring him, are preventing a black man from entering the currently all-white club that is the U.S. Senate.

Here’s Bloomberg’s lead paragraph on the Burris episode today:

Democrat Roland Burris, calling himself “the junior senator from the state of Illinois,” was denied a seat in the U.S. Senate today as the new Congress convened for a ceremonial swearing in.

Here’s The Washington Post:

Senate officials this morning rejected Roland Burris’s effort to be seated as the successor to President-elect Barack Obama, telling the former Illinois attorney general that he lacked the requisite approval of state officials to be sworn in with the rest of the class of 2008 in today’s launch of the 111th Congress.

Here’s the Detroit Free Press:

The political theater provided on Capitol Hill today as the 111th Congress came to Washington was a drama entitled “Mr. Burris Goes to Washington.”
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As in Roland Burris, the 71-year-old former Illinois comptroller, attorney general and Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. Blagojevich is under suspicion by federal prosecutors of trying to barter for seat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada so far is refusing to honor Blagojevich’s selection of Burris – even though he’s under no ethical cloud himself.

Not one of these stories, nor the dozens of others that I’ve been reading in the past hour, mention the word black. Nor do they make reference to the fact that, with Obama assuming the presidency, there is no longer one black face in the U.S. Senate.

A media that has for years been obsessed with the notion that all of our institutions should “look like America” has suddenly become color-blind. Imagine how the stories might begin were Republicans still in control of the Senate:

Officials of the Republican-controlled Senate this morning rejected Roland Burris’s effort to be seated as the successor to President-elect Barack Obama. Burris, the former Illinois attorney general descended from slaves, was told he lacked the requisite approval of state officials to be sworn in as the only black among 99 white members of the class of 2008 in today’s launch of the 111th Congress.

Stories would liken Burris’ being barred to Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace barring black students from the University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium in 1963, and to Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus blocking blacks from integrating Central High School in Little Rock in 1957.

There would undoubtedly be opinions from unnamed Democratic aides to push the racial angle, such as:

Senior Democratic aides were privately gleeful at the spectacle, saying that Republicans, who have been trying to attract more minority voters, would pay in upcoming elections for their high-handed treatment of the black Illinois Democrat.

But this variety of speculation and race-obsession is absent from the stories written today.

Why, it’s almost as if they were written to prevent embarrassment to the Democratic Party and the Democratic leaders of the Senate.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.