They are precisely the sort of questions that need to be asked to get past the "Obamessiah" image that Barack Obama and his campaign have created. Americans need to see beneath the facade.

And it would appear that asking questions that do that raises the hackles of Obama supporters.

The political fallout from the Philadelphia faceoff between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was all but eclipsed yesterday by a fierce debate about Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.

The ABC moderators found themselves under fire for focusing on campaign gaffes and training most of their ammunition on Obama. Huffington Post blogger Jason Linkins called the debate "utterly asinine." Washington Post television critic Tom Shales called the duo's performance "despicable." Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch said the moderators "disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself."

Tough crowd out there.

"I think the questions were certainly pointed -- tough at times, as they should be in a presidential debate -- but not inappropriate or irrelevant at all," Stephanopoulos said yesterday. "The questions have been part of this campaign and in the news. We did our job. You're not going to satisfy everyone."

In the first 40 minutes of Wednesday's two-hour Democratic debate, the moderators asked Obama about his remarks that small-town residents bitterly cling to guns and religion; the inflammatory sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Stephanopoulos followup: "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"); why Obama doesn't wear an American flag pin; and his relationship with William Ayers, a former Weather Underground radical who has acknowledged involvement in several bombings in the 1970s.

In the only comparably aggressive question directed at Clinton, Stephanopoulos cited an ABC/Washington Post poll challenging her honesty and tied it to her false tale of having once come under sniper fire in Bosnia.

The reality is that Americans know all about Hillary, and don't like her. They know all about John McCain, and do like him. But Obama? He remains an unknown, and as such those debate questions were appropriate in terms of helping America take the measure of the man.

My guess? They won't like what they see.

And I pose this question to you -- if Obama were a white man, would he be given a pass after attending Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church for two decades? Would he not be questioned if he were friends with Olympic/abortion clinic/gay bar bomber Eric Rudolph? Wouldn't either of those associations be a deal breaker for most of the American public -- and for the American media?