It takes a racist

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader and all-around racist

Los Angeles Times

Shortly after the first Tax Day tea party, last April, political scientist, American historian, and noted psychologist Janeane Garofalo appeared on the suitably high-brow news analysis show "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" to give her learned assessment of the protesters and their motivation.

"Let's be very honest about what this is about," she intoned with grave studiousness. "This is not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don't know their history at all. It's about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up."

And to prove her own intellectual maturity and fair-mindedness, she dismissed the protesters as "nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks"—borrowing a pejorative term for a rather obscene sexual act popular among some homosexuals.

Since that time, Republicans, conservatives, independents, and even, one presumes, moderate Democrats who have expressed reservations about the job Barack Obama has done as president have been branded racists. Is it possible that those of us who claim to find fault with the Obama presidency (which increasingly is gaining such unlikely adherents as lefty commentator Maureen Dowd, who slammed Obama hard again today in her New York Times column) simply find fault with the Obama presidency? No! shout back the acolytes. You're a racist for even asking!

How is it that Democrats are so adept at sniffing out the racism in seemingly innocent comments? Could it be that they know the brand so well because at least some of them smoke it themselves?

That theory would seem to explain as well as any the unfortunate portrait Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid painted of Barack Obama, whom Reid praised for being "light-skinned" (for a black man) and for not using a "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Negro? I haven't heard that term since Samuel L. Jackson's character used it whimsically in addressing his black boss in Pulp Fiction. I'll bet Joseph Conrad couldn't have gotten away with using the word Negro.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words," Reid said when called out. Blah, blah, blah. Afterward, when the cameras were off, he went on to allow as how some of his best friends were black people (although none of them dark-skinned—perish the thought).

Obama subsequently issued a statement absolving Reid of any wrong-doing. Then again, who is Obama to talk. This, you may recall, is a man who described his own grandmother as "a typical white person" and jumped to unfortunate conclusions about the Cambridge, Massachusetts police—immediately after declaring that it was too early to reach any conclusions about the case involving Obama's friend (and fellow racist) "Skip" Gates.

When you get down to cases, it doesn't matter whether Obama thinks Reid's remarks were racist. Any rational observer would have trouble seeing them as anything other than racist—and the ugliest kind of racism at that: the backhanded compliment. But not to worry. Harry plans on showing his benevolent intentions by inviting the Obamas to dinner. He has even hired for the occasion a cook famous for her fried chicken and has ordered a whole mess of watermelon to be sent in for dessert.