THE WHITEST MAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT (BUT THAT’S NOT RACIST BECAUSE THE PERSON WHO SAID IT IS  A PROGRESSIVE):  And being a progressive makes it okay, of course, to say all kinds of outrageously offensive, racist things.  You can’t make this stuff up, people:  Stephanie Li, an English professor blogging over at the Huffington Post, says Mitt Romney  “truly is the whitest man to run for president because he doesn’t realize how his whiteness has influenced his life and how his class standing provided him with remarkable educational and financial opportunities.”  Further (as though she really needed to go further!):

This theme and the Romney’s repeated vow that they are the creators of their own success taps into long standing myths of the self-made American man, a man who is always implicitly white. But Romney’s narrative of rugged individualism is as false as the image of self-reliant colonists and frontiersman who made their fortunes in large part by relying on the slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans. Romney’s blindness to his own racial privilege is a further function of his whiteness and its invisible entitlements.

So let me get this straight:  The “myth” of being “self-made” can only be attained by white males– and specifically a subset of white males who “rely[] on the slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans”?

This race-obsessed view of things is of course common in progressive circles, including the critical race theory circles in which former adjunct law professor Barack Obama ran.  Consider also this incendiary op-ed by Lee Siegel that ran in the New York Times, in which Siegel said,

The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.

Yes, you heard that right:  Not only is Romney the “whitest white man” but this label means that such super-white folks have a “retro vision of the country” involving white picket fences, stay-at-home moms (watch those lady parts, y’all!), and fathers “unashamed” of working hard for “corporate America” (and what a shameful thing that really is).

Wow.  Really– just wow.  Can you feel the hatred?