PBS newshound Gwen Ifill, who is slated to moderate tomorrow night’s vice-presidential debate at Washington University, has broken her ankle.
UPDATE: According to Washington University student volunteers, the underside of Ifill’s desk will be lined with foam so the cast won’t bang at inconvenient junctures. (Ifill has not yet arrived in St. Louis, so the students have not had the opportunity to sign said cast.)
Ifill’s injury has nothing to do with the recent controversy surrounding her new book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, a study of black politicians in the post-Civil Rights Era. The book is scheduled for publication on Inauguration Day. Conservative websites, including World Net Daily and the Drudge Report, claim the book is a screed in support of Barack Obama. Ifill says she started writing the book when it was still unlikely that Obama would be the Democratic Presidential nominee.
John McCain, for one, believes that Ifill will be unbiased. “I think that Gwen Ifill is a professional, and I think she will do a totally objective job because she is a highly respected professional,” he told Fox News's Carl Cameron.
