Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Frank Rich has been at the lead of the cabal of Democratic operatives, mainstream media columnists and left-wing bloggers who have engaged in a deliberate year-long smear campaign to paint opposition to Obama's agenda as inherently racist.

Rich's most recent column, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!, is mostly an Obama lovefest in which Rich hearts Obama by arguing that since everyone is upset with Obama, Obama must be doing something right.

Rich writes, in his column, of an e-mail Rich received from a prominent liberal Obama supporter who argued that white liberals expected Obama to be more of a firebrand (you mean he's not?) because Obama is black (emphasis mine):

Last week, after I wrote about the role race plays in some of the apocalyptic right-wing hysteria about the health care bill, a friend who is a prominent liberal Obama supporter sent me an e-mail flipping my point. He theorized that race also plays a role in “the often angry and intemperate talk” he has been hearing from “left-liberal friends for the past many months about what a failure and a disappointment” the president has been. In his view, “Obama never said anything, while running, to give anyone the idea” that he was other than a “deliberate, compromise-seeking bipartisan moderate.” [My note: What a joke.] My friend wondered if white liberals who voted for Obama expected a “sweeping Republicans-be-damned kind of agenda” in part — and he emphasized “in part!” — because “they expect a black guy to be intemperate, impetuous, impatient” rather than “measured, deliberate, patient.”

Rich's only evaluation of this claim was to state, non-judgmentally, "I guess anything is possible, particularly when it involves race in America."

That's it. An assessment by a prominent liberal that white liberals expected a black man to be intemperate, impetuous and impatient passed by Frank Rich as if it were nothing.

But if the positions were reversed, and a prominent conservative had said that white conservatives expected a black man to be intemperate, impetuous and impatient ... well you can imagine the flames shooting from Frank Rich's computer keyboard as he typed out another of his vicious attacks.

But apparently negative racial stereotyping is no big deal to race card-playing columnists like Frank Rich, as long as the negative racial stereotyping is by one of their own.

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