Monday, February 02, 2009

RACISM 2.0

Lovely juxtaposition of headline and photo on the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal's Web site:



And on the page with the editorial itself.



Look, don't be impressed by the fact that David Duke has denounced the GOP for picking Michael Steele as RNC chair. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Republicans who delightedly pointed that out to Politico's Ben Smith -- I'm sure they think that's wonderful publicity (Look, we've offended that nasty racist!) But the upscale house opinion organ of the GOP resistance is showing us the way you do modern racism -- with deniability. I know that any Republican who sees this post is going to sneer at my contention that we're supposed to read that Obama-standing-behind-Daschle photo as an allusion to Morgan Freeman as a chauffeur -- oh, those hypersensitive liberals, seeing racism in everything! No one's saying Obama was actually Daschle's driver! That's illogical! But it is what it is. A racial swipe like this works on the reptile brain. It doesn't need to work on the logical brain. And this one works.

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