I wonder if he (and others) should have completely ignored the issue. Clinton, for example, made a couple of mentions of it in recent speeches, also saying that she wished it weren't in the media, but it were her mentions of it driving the media stories. Take away those things and it starves the media fire of fuel.

And, of course, the media themselves aren't going to stop publicising it because issues like these (the mosque in Manhattan, blah blah blah) are moneymakers and talking points. You have to wonder if enraged protesters abroad would even know about this nut-job "pastor" of "world outreach" (laughable!) if he had been more or less ignored from the beginning.