WHITEWASHING THE BLACK PANTHERS: A new PBS documentary tries to excuse a murderous and totalitarian cult.

Last month marked the 45th anniversary of the infamous cocktail party that Leonard and Felicia Bernstein held in their Park Ave. duplex to raise money for the Black Panthers, an evening that would be written up by Tom Wolfe in his classic “Radical Chic” account. A decade ago, after George W. Bush had defeated John Kerry, a man with his own taste for radical chic, I naively pondered if 2004 was “the year that radical chic finally began to die.”

Between PBS and the NFL embracing the legacy of the Black Panthers, and the line that can be drawn from both the Black Panthers and the Weathermen (who were also interconnected at times) to President Obama (and with Kerry as his current Secretary of State), so much for that idea.