It just won’t stop. Contrarian Mickey Kaus is having a full-blown contrarian orgasm, comparing Andrew Sullivan’s swishy dream of a post-racial future with his telepathic knowledge of what reg’ler folks thinks:

I also think it’s pretty clear that Sullivan-style logic is at the core what Ms. Ferraro meant when she said “[he] happens to be very lucky to be who he is” and that “the country is caught up in the concept” of his presidency. She’s not arguing that he’s where he is because black voters are caught up in identity politics–more the opposite, that white and black voters alike are caught up in the idea of ending identity politics. Nor does she does she seem to be arguing it’s wrong to be at least temporarily “caught up” in this concept. But the concept wouldn’t be there if Obama was white.

P.S.: Several normally canny commenters have taken issue with the idea that the Ferraro controversy hurts Obama. They suggest that, even if it loses him white male votes, what he needs now are superdelegates–and it will help turn disgusted superdelegates against Hillary. [...] Skeptical conservative Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana might not forget so easily, though–especially if the Obama campaign can blunder its way to keeping this story alive for a week or two. What would really, permanently impress wavering superdelegates, after all, is if Obama can carry large chunks of the white male vote in those three big states.

Previously:

P.S.: Does the Obama campaign really want to prolong this controversy? Doesn’t he need white male votes in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina? Didn’t that Jesse Helms ad work? Just asking!

The point being, as near as I can determine, that disputing the idea that Obama derives his support from melanin will not play well with ‘white males’ in southern/midwestern states. Coincidentally, this idea also plays poorly with Mickey Kaus. But that’s just a total coincidence. The point is that stout yeomen tilling the good earth of the heartland won’t buy it, and it will be bad from a campaign horse race standpoint. And that’s the point he’s trying to make.

Elsewhere, Ferraro claims she is a victim of racism, as many poor souls have before her. Many express concern that “working class whites” may never join Obama’s coalition outside-the-mainstream blacks and effete chardonnay-and-brie liberals. She sets the record straight on the show of working class hero Bill O’Reilly, and Bill is convinced:

O’REILLY: Look, I got it, but you’re gonna get hammered by it, but if anybody does, let me know, and I’ll take care of them. Geraldine Ferraro, everybody. Geraldine’s too nice, see.

Chivalry, I am pleased to announce, is not dead.

Whether or not Ferraro’s statements were intentionally racist – there are classes of stupid statements, even stupid statements involving race, which are not actually “racist” – there’s no doubt who they will, intentionally or not, resonate with. People who think black people get preferential treatment, and that their own misfortunes are due to the preferential treatment black people get. Racists, mostly, I’d say. Are “working class whites” more likely to be racist than bloggers for Slate.com? I don’t know. Is the suspicion that blacks get preferential treatment an issue that resonates more with “working class whites” than with hosts of cable news talk shows? I don’t know the answer to that, either. But I may know two things.

  1. If something appeals to “racists”, don’t say it appeals to “working class whites”. Even if 99% of working class whites were in the KKK, it would still be insulting and, much less forgivably, imprecise. I know many not-remotely white people and/or people from not-remotely working class backgrounds who are racists. I know many working-class white people who are not. Appeals to racism – intentional or not – appeal to racists. It’s not more complicated than that. Don’t confuse things.
  2. If you pull down a six- or seven-figure salary working in a cushy media job, and especially if you spend time in a makeup chair before putting on your gossipy news “show”, you forfeit the right to speak for the “working class”, or anybody who has a real job, ever again. If your made-up face on your catty chat show is beamed down to normal people from far-out satellites, you are basically a Mick Ronson riff away from being Ziggy Stardust, and should probably work on coming to grips with that, rather than imagining that you are somehow the authentic proletariat. You’re a freaky moonage rich person in spaced-out freaky daydreamland, man. Deal with it.

… Obama’s skin is the wrong color. If he wins the primary, we are going to talk about nothing but this transcendently interesting issue for the next 8 months. If he wins the election, we will talk about nothing but this transcendently interesting issue for 4 years, unless his term is cut short for some reason – a reason which, it will no doubt be agreed, stems from the peculiar, yet fortunate, shade of his skin. Plan your intake of prescribed pharmaceuticals accordingly. For myself, I plan to see if Google knows what these “goofballs” are that the kids are all in to, and how I might go about getting “fucked up on goofballs” for the term of my natural life, or at least until the internet and every media outlet dies of shame and stupidity. I’ll let you know if it helps.

… Now I’m all itchy. And everything still sucks.

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