In what can only be a weeks-late April fool’s piece, a CNN headline today describes the demographic problem presented by Barack Obama’s ethnicity as an “unspoken” issue. Unspoken! And try to keep a straight face while reading this lede:

As both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton race to make history, some political observers believe Obama might have a unique problem because he’s African-American.

Really? Wow! That’s hard-hitting news analysis. Obama’s ethnicity reported for duty before any other issue in his campaign and has not relinquished the limelight since. As a campaign issue, it seems to grow ever larger by the day, and it has overshadowed nearly everything else in this primary.

The CNN piece, by Brian Todd, talks about the Bradley effect (whereby people over-report their commitment to voting for a black candidate) as if it’s breaking news in an attempt to explain away Obama’s Pennsylvania loss, and then lays it to rest with a quote from CNN polling director Keating Holland: “There is no indication in the polls that were taken immediately before the Pennsylvania primary that there was any sort of a ‘Bradley’ effect going on.”

So what is this piece about, again? Yesterday’s headlines said that the candidates were tired. But if today’s headlines are any indication, the media itself is suffering from fatal exhaustion.