IT’S FUN TO PLAY THE RACE CARD ON JOAN WALSH, and God knows she’s earned it. But I need, once again, to correct an improper use of the “some of my best friends” bit. As I’ve noted before:

The classic example was the white bigot who said he couldn’t be a racist because some of his best friends were black — only to have it turn out that those “friends” were his caddy and his shoeshine guy.

When some of your best friends really are black or Jewish, the import is different. People tend to lose this distinction, but I think that’s a combination of laziness and attempt to take unfair rhetorical advantage. As I said earlier, “it’s been morphed into an all-purpose way to ensure that white guys can’t bring up counterexamples when charged with racism.” That’s not fair.

Not even when it’s done to Joan Walsh.

“INCIVILITY” DEFINED: IT MEANS CRITICIZING OBAMA. Going after those racist, terroristic TeaBaggers who should all be hunted down and killed? That’s just good government.

PETER BEINART: Yes, Democrats Can Be Racist. And at the moment, they appear to be in denial about it.

If Dick Harpootlian were a Republican, liberals would be jumping over one another to call him a bigot. In 2002 Harpootlian called Lindsey Graham, then running for a South Carolina Senate seat, “light in the loafers,” thus fueling a nasty whispering campaign about Graham’s sexual orientation. Last Friday he struck again, telling activists to “send Nikki Haley”—South Carolina’s Indian-American governor—“back to wherever the hell she came from.”

But Harpootlian isn’t a Republican. Until he retired last Saturday, he was chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He made his comments about Haley at the party’s annual dinner, just before Joe Biden took the stage. And as a result, the liberal response has been muted. So far, neither Biden nor Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, whose candidacy for a South Carolina congressional seat has gained national attention, has repudiated Harpootlian’s comments. And for now, at least, conservatives are just about the only ones asking them to.

That’s a problem, because unless offenses like Harpootlian’s are slapped down hard, Democratic Party bigotry is likely to get worse. The reason is simple: the Republican Party is getting more diverse.

Also, Democrats are traditionally the party of racial bigotry. Bull Connor, remember, was a member of the Democratic National Committee.

ROGER SIMON ON terrorist apologetics and “psycho-drivel.” “The justification for this extreme bowdlerization by our leadership and mainstream media, I’m assuming, is that to name Islam — and often even radical Islam — as the culprit is to make matters worse, to stir them up. This attitude is actually racist.”

UPDATE: Boston Bombers Fit American Jihadi Profile.

DANA MILBANK WANTS TED CRUZ TO SHUT UP, ISSUES SLOPPY SMEAR: “Cruz is 42, the same age Joe McCarthy was when he amassed power in the Senate.”

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Calvert emails:

Can I play? “Obama is 51, the same age Joseph Stalin was when he called for the liquidation of the kulaks.”

This could be fun!

You’re now qualified to write for the Washington Post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Christopher Arfaa writes: “Dana Milbank will turn 45 next week, the same age as Walter Duranty was in 1929, when he secured an exclusive interview with Josef Stalin.”

MORE: Reader Jay Brinker emails:

May I play?

How about: John Kerry is 69, the same age as Neville Chamberlin when he signed the Munich Agreement.

Or more Obama:

Obama is 51, the same age as Ho Chi Minh when he returned to Vietnam to lead the Viet Minh.

Heh. And reader Janna Blanter writes: “Nadezhda Krupskaya and Michelle Obama were both 28 when they got married – To V.I. Lenin and B.Obama, respectively.”

MORE: Reader Joel Mackey wonders why Dana Milbank is so racist: “His column generates one huge question in my mind, i certainly did not see him write anything of this nature about John Edwards’ or Barack Obama’s rise thru the Senate and into Presidential politics. So why does Dana Milbank hate HIspanics so much?”

And reader Ken Waggoner writes: “Dana Milbank will be 45 years old this year. The same age as Adolf Hitler in 1934 when he ordered ‘The Night of the Long Knives.’”

WELL, IT’S NOT MUCH OF A SLOGAN, BUT IT IS MORE ACCURATE THAN “LEAN FORWARD:” MSNBC: The Network America Turns to for Irresponsible Speculation About News. All that Aryan Brotherhood talk? Never Mind! “In other words, the important thing about this crime — the thing that made it worth eight minutes of national network air time — was that it gave Chris Matthews a chance to stoke the paranoia of MSNBC viewers with the bogeyman specter of dangerously violent racists who (as all MSNBC viewers know) are the core constituency of the Republican Party. Fast-forward 11 days, and Chris Matthews is completely discredited by the latest headlines.”

JAMES TARANTO: Those Courageous Racists: Left-wing bigots pat themselves on the back. “The NSF is a federal agency, so your tax dollars have subsidized the authors of what can only be described as a racist rant. . . . What’s even weirder about the Childress twins’ piece is that their counterfactual actually is not counterfactual at all if you broaden the scope beyond acts of mass murder to murder more generally or all violent crime. Blacks do in fact commit a large disproportion of violent crimes, and while the subject is not taboo in respectable public debate, it is delicate. . . . But the absolute strangest thing about the twins’ racist rant is the self-satisfied tone. They think they’re breaking a taboo, bravely challenging convention by scapegoating white men. Give us a break. Antiwhite and antimale bigotry couldn’t be less courageous or more clichéd. It’s been a constant feature of academic discourse for decades and of journalistic writing for years. It has been the dominant theme of political coverage since Barack Obama’s re-election.”

COLORING THE NEWS: “Because It Wasn’t Already Contentious Enough … WaPo Op-Ed Injects Race Into the Gun Debate.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times sees racism in the conservative reaction to the seeming attempt by leftist California elites to destroy the once Golden State.

But then, past or present, what doesn’t the Gray Lady view through a racialist prism?

UPDATE: “Why Did Those Racist Crackers at CNN Keep Roland Martin From Being a Star?”

HISTORY LESSON: Michael Walsh on Racist Democrats and the Big Lie.

RELATED: Conservative Black Neurosurgeon Must Be Destroyed.

LIB/PROGRESSIVE HYPOCRISY, PART 8,943:  Ah, sweet liberal/progressive hypocrisy!  This time, it manifests itself in the usual way– hurling of the “R” word– at those who deign to question the propriety of spending large chunks of taxpayer dollars for the President’s daughters’ lavish spring break in the Bahamas.  In a piece titled “How Not to Seem Like a Racist:  A tip for right-wingers angry about charges of racial bias: Try treating the Obama daughters with decency,” Joan Walsh at Salon writes:

The theme of most right-wing stories on Sasha, Malia and Michelle Obama’s vacations and leisure-time activities seems to be that they’re entitled princesses, when they do exactly the same kinds of things other presidents’ families have done throughout history. There’s only one difference I can see.

And oh, do liberals/progressives just love to “see” that “difference” in every single thing!  As John Sexton documents at Breitbart, Walsh was more than happy to write much more vile things about President Bush’s daughters.

OUCH: Trifecta of boom: ‘Justified’ co-star Nick Searcy blasts ‘racist, boring’ Touré, Yglesias and Piers Morgan.

THE REAL RACIAL POLITICS of the Kwame Kilpatrick scandal. “The stunningly corrupt politician, who looted from Detroit’s poor and needy to pay for a life of luxury he never earned, is going to jail. . . . Too many of Kilpatrick’s colleagues and collaborators are still at large. And far too many of America’s big cities are cursed by deeply corrupt political machines that don’t just steal but also wreck the fabric of governance and deprive poor people of the services they need to have a chance at a better life.” But if you prosecute the crooks who are enriching themselves and ruining their cities, you’ll be called a racist.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Mirage Of Racism. Mirage? What about all those racists in Manhattan?

TA-NEHISI COATES ON RACISM IN MANHATTAN.

This leads Ann Althouse to write: “My question is: How did some people get to be considered the ‘good’ people in the first place? It’s that question that fires my antagonism to liberals. They think they are good.”

Given that so many are racist — by Coates’ own account, his wife is a racist who has been “at war” with white people since childhood — perhaps our whole approach has been wrong. Or perhaps some people profit too much by keeping racist fires fanned. And maybe too many of them are among the “good people.”

Plus, from the comments: “Time to extend the Voting Rights Act to New York. The place is chock full of racists!”

UPDATE: Another comment: “I wonder whether Coates has a good enough memory to imagine himself as a white, male college student on the Duke University LAX team.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Massachusetts more racist than Mississippi? Well, when I was a kid I carried a sign in a march against Louise Day Hicks.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Skaggs quotes Dick Gregory: “Down South they don’t care how close I am as long as I don’t get too big, and up North they don’t care how big I am as long as I don’t get too close.”

RACIST POLITICS IN KENTUCKY: Liberal Super PAC Goes After Mitch McConnell’s ‘Chinese’ Wife. “A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife. For months, the liberal super PAC Progress Kentucky has attacked McConnell and held demonstrations at his offices and home. Recently, the group turned its attention to McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, with a focus on her race.”

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney we’d see the return of shameful, race-baiting politics in America. And they were right!

I BELIEVE YOU MEAN RACIST BIG MEDIA: Big Media is hot to wreck Ted Cruz. “Attacking the aggressive Ted Cruz when Liz Warren simultaneously hits the Senate in full aggression mode.”

A double standard between a white woman and a Latino man. The overwhelmingly white Big Media has a double standard.

I THINK THE OXNARD SCHOOL AUTHORITIES SHOULD BE FIRED FOR THEIR RACIST ASSUMPTION THAT HISPANICS AREN’T AMERICANS. Shameful.

ROGER SIMON: Who’s the Racist? Sam Tanenhaus, Meet Dr. Benjamin Carson. “I found what I read of Tanenhaus to be stultifyingly banal and predictable.” Plus, Howard Berman’s brother goes Republican, “Because of what the Democratic Party did to black people.”

PROF. JACOBSON: “Rigging” the electoral system only is bad when it hurts Democrats. Yeah, I saw Josh Marshall on Twitter yesterday, trying to figure out a way to call this racist, and I knew they were worried.

HEY, THAT’S NOT THE NARRATIVE! Democrats Facing Diversity Drought.

Come January, Republicans will have at least as many minority senators as Democrats and will have four minority governors to Democrats’ one.

The Senate appointment of Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and the death of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) on Monday mean that, at least for now, the GOP will have three incoming minority senators, and Democrats will have two or three (depending on who is appointed to Inouye’s seat, though it seems likely to be another minority candidate).

For whatever reason, the GOP is doing a better job of cultivating minority candidates for major statewide office these days. But why? The answer isn’t simple, but a big reason for it is actually a law that was designed to help minorities: The Voting Rights Act. . . . In fact, the National Journal reported that Democrats elected just six minorities to majority-white districts and states in 2010. And they actually had fewer minorities elected to such offices than Republicans did.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, the WSJ notes the Democratic/Media narrative failure here:

Mr. Scott will become the Senate’s lone black member and the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction. The GOP will no doubt enjoy having a high-profile black politician to assist in minority outreach. But it’s also worth noting that Mr. Scott is a favorite of the tea party activists whom Democrats and liberals have tried to dismiss as bigots. Two years ago, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning “racist elements and activities” in the tea party. The civil rights group also issued a report that accused the movement of giving a “platform to anti-Semites, racists and bigots.”

The popularity of other black tea party heroes like Herman Cain and Florida Congressman Allen West should have been enough to put this nonsense to rest. But now that this supposedly “racist” grass-roots movement is partly responsible for the Senate’s only black member come January, be assured that the media will set about refuting these baseless accusations.

That was a joke.

Yes, it was.

Related: Obama Losing Ground With Young Black Men? Impossible. All black people think and vote the same way. Everyone knows that. On the other hand, what, exactly, has Obama done for them besides be black himself?

UPDATE: Reader Gregg Geil writes:

Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas – a white male – represents a Latino majority district. Latinos did not turn out to vote in the primary but hordes of young, urban, white hipsters did, and they voted overwhelmingly for the white liberal over the Mexican American candidate.

Racists!

RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: RG III, ‘Cornball Brothers,’ and the Blackness Code: The new enforcers of racial authenticity use racist logic to define blackness. “It could be a comedy routine on Saturday Night Live — the notion of a black man standing before some kind of Blackness Panel to determine if he’s black enough. What would be the qualifications? Who would the questioners be, and what would they ask? How would the scoring work, and would there be a talent requirement? Singing and dancing, possibly? And an oath of black allegiance at the end?”

SO WITH TIM SCOTT’S APPOINTMENT, the GOP has the nation’s only black senator and both of its two latino governors. Kinda busts the racial narrative, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: The narrative isn’t giving up: “The linked WaPo article identifies Thurmond — ‘the former segregationist’ — as a Republican, but when he was a big-time segregationist, he was a Democrat.”

Yep. Just like DNC-member Bull Connor. Plus, from the comments:

A female, Indian GOP Governor appoints a black man to the Senate.

Do you really need any more evidence to believe that the GOP is engaged in a racist, sexist war on minorities and women?

Not if you’re at the WaPo, apparently.

STEVE CROWDER SENDS THIS FOOTAGE OF HIM BEING ASSAULTED BY UNION THUGS IN MICHIGAN. Crowder emails: “The video is self explanatory. I was sucker-punched 4 times on camera, without retaliation, choked, and the AFP tent is torn to the ground with women and children inside of it. Extremely violent footage. Please post for truth.” It’s also rich listening to the union guy yell about “parasites” and “freeloaders.” Don’t they know those words are racist?

The video shows numerous union representatives engaging in violent, illegal conduct. Their faces are clearly identifiable. I hope they will be prosecuted, and sued.

And will President Obama condemn this violent behavior?

UPDATE: Michael Lotus writes:

No matter what Obama does, there is going to be a lot more of this.

These guys are out of ideas, out of money, and have no sane argument to make for what they want everyone else to pay for.

Thank God for camera phones. Even ten years ago, they would have done a lot worse, and gotten away with it.

And to answer your question, my guess is Obama says nothing and the news media does not cover it, which means it never happened.

Or it would mean that if it weren’t for camera phones and the Internet.

Crowder showed good restraint. If he had thrown a punch, he’d have been stomped to death.

We need to identify this guy and make an example of him. And his union bosses. I’ve pledged $1000 toward the reward fund.

JAMES TARANTO: ‘Voter Suppression,’ Debunked: A black activist’s surprising admission. “Hardy’s assessment of the 2012 election, however, directly contradicts the claim that voter ID laws actually suppress minority voting. According to her, they have precisely the opposite effect. . . . A common academic definition of ‘racism’ excuses racial hostility or bigotry on the part of minorities on the ground that one can’t be racist unless one has power. But the main thrust of the postelection racial commentary has been triumphalist, not downtrodden: Obama’s victory is understood precisely as a show of minority power and white powerlessness. Can the left really have it both ways? Well, they can certainly try.”

IN VIRGINIA, gun sales are up, and crime is down.

Gosh, who could have seen this coming?

UPDATE: Via reader John Lucas, much more here from the Times-Dispatch. Lucas adds:

The [Washington Post] op ed predictably (for the Wa Po) tries to denigrate the data in the Times Dispatch article. The ultimate sentence betrays the author’s viewpoint, while reinforcing the Wa Po’s recent editorial slant that opposition to this administration is racist: “As for Obama, any link between a desire for personal, deadly firepower and the election of the country’s first African American president raises some rather ugly questions.”

The Times Dispatch article really is well done.

Yes, the Post has really descended into racial agitprop lately. One can only imagine what they’d be like if Obama had lost. And it does seem that we see better and more honest journalism these days from regional papers than from the WaPo and the NYT.

IN CANADA, HOW COURTING THE IMMIGRANT VOTE PAID OFF FOR THE TORIES:

Fifteen cups of tea. That’s how the election was won.

In one day during the 2011 election campaign, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attended 15 different chai parties hosted by Indo-Canadian voters in Brampton West, Ont. That’s just a snapshot of his epic cross-Canada campaigning, but it’s indicative of the stamina and persistence of the Conservative point man for ethnic communities.

He and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have transformed their party from one that was perceived as hostile to new Canadians to one that is now home to a great many immigrant voters and Members of Parliament.

It helps. When Phil Bredesen ran for governor in Tennessee the first time, he was thought of as an out-of-touch northeasterner. He then spent a lot of time going to chili suppers and VFW affairs all over the state, and by the next time people thought he was okay. Of course the Democrats and media run a double-bind operation here: They attack the GOP for being racist and insular, but then also attack it if it reaches out to new groups. That’s a calculated strategy to keep the GOP isolated, but you just have to overcome it.

This kind of outreach, done right, would do more good than amnesty bills. Harder to do at the national-campaign level, though.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON THE DEMOCRATS’ BOGUS CRIES OF RACISM:

One of the points of racial slander is to signal that only liberal policies are guaranteed to be non-racist (even when such policies were forged with racist intent, like the Davis-Bacon Act). This is why the Congressional Black Caucus insists on calling itself the “conscience of the Congress.”

That’s why policies like school choice are routinely denounced as racist, even though they’re largely aimed at improving the lives of inner-city blacks trapped in bad schools. Teachers unions don’t like school choice, ergo, it’s racist.

Any serious attempt by the GOP to win black votes won’t involve Republicans copycatting liberal policies. It will require going over the heads of black and white liberal slanderers to offer a sincere alternative to failed liberal policies on schools, poverty, crime, etc. The more effective that effort, the more the GOP will be called racist.

When Romney, whose father marched with Martin Luther King Jr., spoke to the NAACP, Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast dubbed him a “race-mongering pyromaniac,” primarily for using the term “ObamaCare” — a term Barack Obama used himself.

Just imagine the attacks in store for a more effective Republican.

Indeed.

MICKEY KAUS: SELF-DILUTED:

We’ll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they’re told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that … increases the number of Hispanics! It’s a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.

Joshua Culling, who works for Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, elaborates on the plan elsewhere on this site. It turns out the idea–let’s call it the Grover Plan, just to be annoying–isn’t as wacky as I you might think. It’s wackier.

Suppose Republicans conspire with Dems to bring amnesty to the 10 or 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are already here. Eventually they become citizens. Will they be ready to wipe the slate clean and vote Republican? Or will the Dems figure out new ways to gin up their ethnic base at election time?

I know which way to bet, especially with a media apparat that calls the GOP the party of old racist white people.

CHANGE SAME: Obama will spend election night with pastor despite recent racist remarks.

‘YOU’RE A MARKED MAN, KYLE WOOD:’ Report: Candidate’s Husband Allegedly Sent Insulting, Threatening, and Racist (!!!) Texts to Beaten Wisconsin Political Staffer Before Attack.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This appears to be just another fake hate-crime story.

HOW’S THAT “POST-RACIAL PRESIDENCY” STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? 2012 voters: The deepest racial split since ’88. When calling your critics racist is your default position, this is no surprise.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Can The Democrats Sink Any Lower?

Sure they can. Hey, there are two weeks to go until the election! The party of slavery, Jim Crow and corruption is just getting warmed up. Gloria Allred has not yet been heard from, which I guess is another way of saying that the fat lady has not yet sung. And on YouTube, the Democrats’ unofficial brigades have launched the anti-Mormon smears that we have long been expecting.

It isn’t only the presidential election, either. Power Line’s Pick Six candidate Mia Love became a star at the Republican National Convention, which prompted a series of vicious racist attacks by the Democrats. The first was when a Democrat hacked her Wikipedia page to describe her as a “house nigger.” Republicans get accused of racism when they mention golf or Chicago, but Democrats don’t fool around: when they decide to go racist, they call a Republican a nigger. The Democrats’ smear campaign against Mia and her family continues to this day, but you can help to fight back by donating to Mia’s campaign here. . . . You would think that at some point, decent people would be ashamed to be associated with the Democratic Party. For all too many, that hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, fasten your seat belt, because the Democrats are about to pull out every stop in their desperate greed to hang on to unearned wealth and political power.

Read the whole thing.

EDGY: Decrepit, Rapidly-Aging Madonna Excites Denver Fans By Pretending to Fire Gun Into Crowd.

What a racist.

HOSTILE WORKPLACE: Obama’s Female Debate Coach Complained About ‘Hostile Workplace’ at White House.

Really? Where would she get that impression?

At the exact moment Jon Favreau is receiving high praise in pre-inaugural media puff pieces, the 27-year-old chief speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama (not Jon Favreau, the Hollywood actor/ director) finds himself in a minor mess over a photo from a recent private party showing him groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unnamed pal wearing an “Obama staff” T-shirt kisses and feeds her beer.

If you haven’t seen it, imagine the early stages of the barroom rape scene of “The Accused” with Jodie Foster. Or think prosecutor Mike Nifong’s graphic (though false) descriptions of the Duke lacrosse party. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson danced to a similar tune at the 2004 Super Bowl.

Fraternities have been closed for less.

(And has anyone told Obama’s campaign co-chair about this issue? She may be laboring under a false consciousness.)

RELATED: Heh, indeed.™

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Tamera Mowry-Housley tweets about debate interruptions; racists mock her interracial marriage to Fox journo.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON calls out a racist.

THE NEO-PURITAN VOTE: Romney and Obama: Dueling Bostonians. “When Wilsonians turn their gaze toward the United States, they become what I think of as the Bostonian school in domestic politics. Like the New England Puritans to whom they owe so much, today’s Bostonians believe that a strong state led by the righteous should use its power to make America a more moral and ethical country. This, I believe, is the tradition in American domestic politics that most profoundly shapes President Obama’s worldview. . . . Bostonians over the years have changed their ideas about morality; few today would agree with Increase Mather and John Winthrop that the state should punish any deviation from Biblical morality as understood by 17th century puritan divines. But when it comes to punishing offenses against righteousness as defined by a congress of humanities professors, multiculturalist activists and foundation grants officers, the liberal morality police are ready to march — and to smite. Today’s neo-puritans would certainly agree that once morality has been re-defined in a suitably feminist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-tobacco and anti-obesity way, it is the clear duty of the Civil Magistrate to enforce the moral law—and that our governing constitutions and laws must be interpreted—by the godly who alone ought to be seated on the judicial tribunals—to give said magistrates all the power they require for their immense and unending task of moral regulation and uplift.”

CIVILITY IS STILL DEAD: Nice catch by James Taranto in his latest Best of the Web column:

• “[Sarah] Palin’s map is of a similar vein, though it is more personal. The markers on the map, showing the location of the congressional districts, look like the crosshairs of a rifle sight, and it was accompanied by a list of names. . . . It’s silly for her aides to claim she did not intend these to be gunsights.”–”fact check,” Washington Post website, Jan. 11, 2011
• “Paul Ryan in the Crosshairs”–headline, Washington Post website, Oct. 3, 2012

Why is the Washington Post being so racist?

IF YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HEAR THE “DOG WHISTLE,” THEN YOU’RE THE DOG: Unhinged: Harper’s Mag accuses Romney of ‘sly’ racist jab at Obama.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Iserman writes: “If dog whistles can only be heard by dogs then, presumably, racist dog whistles can only be heard by racists. So, why is it that the only people who can hear all these ‘racist dog whistles’ are liberals?” Why, indeed?

THAT OBAMA DAILY CALLER VIDEO: Most interesting as proof of media hypocrisy. “For starters, the hypocrisy meter has now blown a gasket. The media crowd that would consider Mitt Romney’s hair-cutting episode to be front page news and has played pin-the-gaffe-on-Romney for an entire election cycle now sniffs that this video is not only not important, but not even news. The mainstream media clown show continues unabated.”

Meanwhile, reader Tim Ryan writes: “I’m thinking the dismissive journalists are right – the video won’t hurt Obama that much, because everyone knows he’s a crypto lefty . . . but it is another body blow to the MSM, which I think will never recover its reputation lost during the Obama presidency in general and in particular their intentional dereliction of duty for two consecutive elections.”

Related: JournoList flashback: MSM Busted Plotting To Kill Jeremiah Wright Scandal.

Among those who were uncovered to be part of the plan to quell Wright coverage were Richard Kim of the Nation, Michael Tomasky of the Guardian, Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun, Holly Yeager of the Columbia Journalism Review, Slate magazine contributor David Greenberg, columnist Joe Conason, Chris Hayes of the Nation, and Spencer Ackerman — then of the Washington Independent.

Strong reported that Ackerman even once “urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”

Hey, was Conor Friedersdorf a member of JournoList?

Meanwhile, Nick Gillespie comments:

Whatever else you can say about Barack Obama before he beat John McCain four years ago, his actual presidency has been far, far worse than could have been predicted. Was his boyhood mentor “Frank” a secret communist? Did Bill Ayers write his books? Did young Barry harbor a soft spot for Franz Fanon and smoke dope like a Cheech & Chong extra? Did he get into Columbia despite being an adult illiterate raised in Kenya by Rosicrucians? Let’s play along and say yes to all this and more.

So freaking what? Compare any and all of that to the grim landscape that Obama has presided over like a dime-store Ozymandias. The guy got just about everything he wanted – expanded auto bailout, mega-stimulus, health-care reform, troop surge in Afghanistan, a free pass to deport immigrants and raid legal-under-state-law pot dispensaries. And it hasn’t worked. The best that the Obama administration can do to defend its objectively awful record – don’t forget the inability to muscle a goddamn budget through the Democratic Senate or deliver a deficit under $1 trillion – is to say that it would have been even worse if McCain had been elected. That sort of counterfactual – and the insistence that it’s alway George W. Bush’s fault – is the last resort of a scoundrel. That was the essence of Clint Eastwood’s bizarre but memorable appearance at the Republican National Convention: Obama hasn’t gotten the job done. If anything, he’s made things worse.

That’s certainly true. But then the media didn’t just tell us he was post-racial. They also told us he was smart and competent. Equally true, I’d say.

UPDATE: More Hypocrisy: Obama Voted Against Katrina Waiver.

Obama was one of a small minority in the Senate who voted against the bill that waived the Stafford Act that made assistance funds available to the New Orleans Katrina victims without their having to match them with a 10% contribution.

That’s the same Stafford Act he lied about in his 2007 Hampton speech, the waiver that had actually occurred several weeks before he made the speech, the waiver that he voted against.

See this for a list of those who voted for and against. You’ll note that Obama’s “nay” vote was one of only 14 cast against the act, almost all of them liberal Democrats. No doubt he would say he knew the act would pass and so he felt okay voting against it in order to protest the Iraq war funds that were also part of the bill. But there’s something profoundly distasteful and almost grotesque about him voting against the waiver, knowing the bill had passed despite his vote, and then lying to the audience to make them angry that the waiver hadn’t happened.

Also typical.

MORE: Important Poll- Hilary vs Obama: Whose Fake Black Accent is Better?

MORE STILL: Thoughts from James Taranto:

That the 2007 video is getting wide attention only now does tell us something unflattering–albeit again something hardly novel–about the media. The speech got some coverage at the time–the Chicago Sun Times’s Lynn Sweet published an “as prepared” transcript that left out some inflammatory improvisational bites–but it might have been worth a closer look, if not in 2007 then the following year, when Obama was clearly a serious presidential contender and his association with Wright was blowing up in his face. But journalists in 2008 largely did not take the sort of adversarial approach toward Obama that they are taking today with Romney. Yet while that is a good reason to mistrust the media, it is not a particularly strong argument against voting for Obama.

One other observation is worth making about the difference between 2007, when Obama gave the new old speech, and today: The then-senator’s implicit premise, that America still regarded blacks as something less than full citizens, is manifestly false today in a way that it was not then. America has disproved it precisely by electing a black president.

The left, predictably enough, has responded to the video with shrieks of racism. This is partly reflexive and partly defensive–i.e., an effort to make absolutely certain that the video doesn’t hurt Obama. But suppose Obama gave a speech today like the one he gave in 2007. Could anyone seriously argue that he would not deserve to be held to account for divisive racial demagoguery? There’s a reason why the 2012 video announcing “African Americans for Obama” was so (you’ll pardon the expression) vanilla.

For decades racial appeals have been understood to be evil when directed at whites but acceptable when directed to blacks. That double standard was justifiable when white supremacy was a reality, then a recent memory. It becomes less so with every passing year, and especially with milestones like the election of a black president. The left’s overwrought reaction to the new old Obama video probably doesn’t say much about the state of the 2012 campaign, but it does portend difficulty in maintaining a worldview in which paranoia about racism plays a central role.

Indeed.

POOLS OF WASTE AND CIVIL LIBERTY INTRUSIONS: at the DHS fusion centers.  Between this and the video of Obama channeling Sharpton look for the media to be ultra-protective at the debate and condemn as racist any vague suggestion Romney might make that Obama might be less than competent.  Take that in account as you watch.

OBAMA’S CHANNELING OF AL SHARPTON IS “OLD NEWS” TO PROGRESSIVES:   Progressives and liberals in the mainstream media are scrambling to dismiss the significance of the video released yesterday by the Daily Caller, showing then-candidate Obama channeling his inner Al Sharpton.  James Rainey at the LA Times concludes:

With the release of the video this week, some of Obama’s familiar enemies want to relitigate his old relationships. They want to reopen the question of whether the president is someone Americans really don’t know. Maybe voters can’t wait for a second trial on the president’s sentiments on race. But it’s more likely the only ones who will be listening will be the ones who already condemned him the first time around.

As I stated in an earlier post, this is a revelation to many people who voted for Obama because they thought (wrongly, as it turned out) he represented a post-racial America. It is most emphatically not merely the ones who “already condemned him the first time around.”  People wanted hope and change– many of them have now lost hope and realize the “change” Obama wants apparently applies only to white folks, whom he sees as fundamentally racist.  This is not the post-racial man that most well meaning Americans thought they voted for.

BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Yup, the Republicans are the racist ones. Not the party saying “Sure, the country’s a mess, he broke all his promises, we’re at war with even more countries than before, but at least he’s black.”

Heh.

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?

JIM TREACHER DISTILLS AN ATLANTIC ARTICLE: “Interviewing people is racist.” At least until November 6.

SILENT SPRING‘S 50-YEAR HISTORY OF SELECTIVE DATA: “Rachel Carson, more than any other person, created the politicized science that afflicts today’s public policy debates,” Ronald Bailey writes at Reason today:

Rachel Carson’s jeremiad against pesticides is credited by many as launching the modern environmentalist movement, and the author, who died in 1964, is being widely lauded for her efforts. “She was the very first person to knock some of the shine off of modernity,” says environmentalist Bill McKibben in a New York Times Magazine article from this past Sunday.

And she’d be far from the last, as so much of today’s “liberalism” particularly the flavor that’s pumped out the Times, is, ironically, a sustained assault on modernity.

RELATED: Raaaaacist! If you really do believe in your heart of heart that half the country is racist, as Mark Steyn catches a HuffPo contributor professing, and not just using trying to score cheap rhetorical points, then you’re also tacitly admitting that the entire mid-century arc of American liberalism, from Truman desegregating the Army, to MLK and the Great Society to Hollywood’s middlebrow period of teaching racial tolerance in the 1960s is a failure.

Or you could simply be a member of the Paranoid Center.

(If you missed my interview with Steyn last week on After America, click here.)

MIA LOVE pulls into the lead.

Some Democrats seem not to be taking it that well: Police investigating racist pictures sent to Mia Love. “Christensen said the envelope contained fliers, pictures and pages printed from the Internet. He said the city has received mail aimed at Love four or five times before, but the latest envelope caused enough concern to involve police.”

NO SURPRISE, BUT NICE TO HAVE THIS ON THE RECORD AS AN ADMISSION: Liberal super PAC: Calling Republicans racist more effective than criticizing policy.

A top official at a liberal super PAC with the goal of eradicating tea partiers from Congress is telling activists that it’s more effective to label Republicans as racists than criticize their policies.

According to an audio recording obtained by The Daily Caller, Matthew “Mudcat” Arnold, the national campaign manager of the liberal CREDO super PAC, told a gathering of supporters in Aurora, Colo., on Sept. 8 that they’ve realized “policy did not move voters.”

He used Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King as an example.

“When we said that Steve King … is pro-life and believes in cutting Social Security and voted for the Ryan budget, no one cared,” Arnold said. “When we said Steve King’s a racist, Steve King believes that immigrants ought to be put in electric fences, people moved.”

Shameless.

SPENGLER: When Do We Get To Attack Obama’s Character? Never, because shut up. Also, racist.