"I’ll have to take Barbour at his word that he’s not a racist." - Eugene Robinson

Whistling Dixie—Again, by Eugene Robinson

"Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America’s racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game? Perhaps both. The Mississippi governor, considered a potential Republican candidate for president in 2012, keeps displaying what appears to be an astonishing level of ignorance about our nearly 400-year struggle with issues of race. At this point, it’s more than a pattern. It’s either a pathology or a plan ...

"Nothing about the way Barbour has acted in his long public life suggests that he really admires the first grand wizard of the KKK. But by dodging the question, he avoids alienating voters who might think that Forrest was a prince of a guy. In other words: “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.” Hold it, that quote isn’t from Barbour, it’s from House Speaker John Boehner ... “I’ll take him at his word,” Boehner said, when asked whether he believes Obama is a Christian. I suppose, then, that I’ll have to take Barbour at his word that he’s not a racist."

Full article: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/whistling_dixie_--_again_20110217/

If the great Eugene Robinson's column gets noticed by our somnambulent bulldogs of the Fourth Estate, they will no doubt be overcome by the vapors at his mean words, and his unconscionable tactic of throwing the Republicans' fatuous words back in their insipid faces.

I know of no other news analyst that gets it as right as often as he does.

But I don't want to tell anyone what to think.

:toast: