Have you read this extraordinary column by Charles Blow? It’s worth a look. Blow attended a Tea Party rally, and he was disturbed by the spectacle of non-white conservative activists addressing a largely white crowd.

I found the imagery surreal and a bit sad: the minorities trying desperately to prove that they were “one of the good ones”; the organizers trying desperately to resolve any racial guilt among the crowd. The message was clear: How could we be intolerant if these multicolored faces feel the same way we do?

He continues in this vein:

Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused.

One assumes that Blow’s remarks are not intended to entertain his largely white audience, many of whom are, I’d suggest, very much on the rim of obliviousness about a number of fairly important issues.

Blow notes, correctly, that a disproportionately large number of Tea Partiers believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. This strikes me as unfortunate to say the least. What also strikes me as unfortunate, and far more consequential, is that many very influential people, including at least some of the people running our government, seem to believe that sharply raising spending will not require raising taxes for households earning less than $250,000 a year. That or they expect us to believe that this is true, at least until the end of the 2012 election cycle.

There’s an ongoing conversation about Charles Blow’s column that you can follow here.