The news value of this story will probably be questioned by the JournoListers, but to me it is obvious and twofold: First, it illustrates vividly the intense anger on the Left that flourished in the wake of the Democrats’ political losses in 2000, 2002, and 2004 — as Manichean and hyperbolic as anything found in the tea party today. (Dan’s piece in the latest NRODT touches on this.) Second, and especially in light of the NAACP’s recent condemnation of the tea party as racist, it demonstrates how eager are some on the Left to deploy the race card as a political weapon.
As Ackerman perceptively notes, falsely accusing non-racists of racism tends to enrage them. With regard to Obama, the accusation is easily refuted by a simple thought experiment: Would conservatives be opposing Obama’s policies as vehemently if a white president were enacting them? The answer is obviously yes, and the evidence lies in an American past rife with examples of similarly vehement opposition to overweening liberalism. And yet the charge is always difficult to disprove completely, because it concerns what the accused believes in his soul. That is why it is such a despicable accusation when the accuser makes it knowing (or not caring whether) it is false.
P.S. Signatories of that open letter to ABC maintained then and continue to maintain that it was about the media’s “excessive emphasis on tangential ‘character’ issues” instead of on substantive questions of policy. That was completely hypocritical BS then, and I find it telling that now — as the popularity of Obama’s agenda continues to tank — his supporters have made opposition to his policies a “character issue” by accusing those who oppose them of racism.