I was just stunned watching Morning Joe, because I thought we had FINALLY gotten beyond the kind of thing that I just saw. The first hour plus were devoted to how Hillary's speech last night was a deliberately lukewarm "endorsement" of Barack Obama the Democrat, but conspicuosly failed to endorse him as a person.
Then they switched to how Barack and Michelle Obama were totally at fault for this because Barack Obama had failed to call Bill Clinton, and had claimed that he was "too busy." Then they talked about how Hillary Clinton had supposedly repeatedly called Michelle Obama, but Michelle had supposedly refused to return her calls.
And then they got around to playing the race card in the most stunningly explicit fashion that I've heard in decades. It seems that Barack Obama is like Ivy League MBA who shows up on the shop floor and lays everybody off. And then it got to how Barack Obama managed to get into all of those elite schools he attended. Pat Buchanan volunteered a story about hearing from an alumnus of some Catholic high school that they'd had three members of their most recent graduating class admitted to Harvard, and how he'd said, "That's great!" And how he'd heard in return, "They were all black."
I was stunned. The story line is now EXPLICITLY that Barack Obama is the unqualified black guy who is taking YOUR job, or YOUR kid's spot in college, simply because of the color of his skin. As somebody from a lower middle-class white backgroud myself, I know that this is just below the surface. But I thought that we might really get beyond it in this election, and that if the Republicans attempted to play this card, the media might expose what they were doing. I hadn't bargained on the media leading the charge toward fueling white resentment and outright racism.
We've got our work cut out for us, and if we don't defeat this crap in THIS election, we've LOST our country. PLEASE do what you can to support Barack Obama in this election. Do it TODAY. Volunteer your time. Contribute whatever you can afford. Our country, and our decency, depend upon it.