…how about the attempt by this reader (and a few bloggers) to inject a racial component into any criticism thrown at Barack Obama:

With all the hue and cry about MoveOn.org’s lame advert, etc., I am still waiting for someone on NRO to chastise the White House source ($10 on Rove) who popped off about the “…lazy” black Presidential candidate. Shan’t hold my breath?

This is the first I’d heard of it, but I’m game. First of all, Rove isn’t a “White House official” and hasn’t been one for a month now. So you owe me ten bucks.

Second, here is the relevant excerpt from a piece in the Examiner.

As for Obama, a senior White House official said the freshman senator from Illinois was “capable” of the intellectual rigor needed to win the presidency but instead relies too heavily on his easy charm.
“It’s sort of like, ‘that’s all I need to get by,’ which bespeaks sort of a condescending attitude towards the voters,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And a laziness, an intellectual laziness.”
He cited an example from Obama’s memoir, The Audacity of Hope, in which the senator complains that many “government programs don’t work as advertised.” Five days after the book was published last fall, Obama was asked to name some of those government programs by Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“And he can’t give an example,” the official said. “Look, if you wrote the book, you should have thought through what it was. But he’s sitting there, fumbling around.”

If Obama were white, then I’m sure he’d be praised for not knowing what’s in his own book, five days after it was published.

I wouldn’t blame him, though. If he’s like everyone else in Washington — regardless of race, party or ethnic background — he hired someone else to write it for him.