Why liberals think conservatives harbor racists

'Cause they do:

[T]here's no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama's parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don't want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage in an argument with liberalism on substantive terms; they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black. It has been two years since a black man was elected president of the United States, and for a group of conservatives clinging to their cultural superiority, this was a moment of apocalyptic existential crisis, a moment that refuted all they had come to know and understand about themselves, about black people, and about this country. [Dinesh] D'Souza is writing for them, the same kind of audience he has always written for.

Conservatives deeply resent being called racists over claims such as D'Souza's, thrust forward by Newt Gingrich. Their logic appears to be:

• D'Souza has pigmented skin and therefore cannot be racist - or even say something racist.
• A conservative white guy can - and eagerly will - repeat anything a black (or brown or any other non-pale shade) person can say. (Digression: which is why it's no longer racist in wingnuttia for 50-year-old white guys with Confederate flags to say n***** as long as it's in rhyme.)
• Liberals are the true racists for not agreeing to this so-called logic.
• Pbbbt!!!

(h/t Atrios)

Don't bother to read this

It's in TAPPED. Atrios linked to it. It doesn't need my small propagation to gain an audience. But I just have to quote this, apropos of the Washington Post hiring yet another neocon torture apologist:

There's really no limit to what you can achieve in Washington as long as you leverage your efforts towards helping the powerful escape culpability for their wrongdoing. It's like the mob. You show loyalty to the right people, eventually you get made.

Liberal media. No amount of repetition can make that particular forkful of bullshit true, and yet Palindrones still think it forward and backward.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Party of torture

The American party of god:

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally [sic] cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it. Liz Cheney's unequivocal support for torture methods gleaned from communist China has people begging her to run for office.

Identity politics

Since I'm outsourcing today to Atrios's outsources, here's something from TAPPED:

What people like Taylor find so offensive about Sotomayor's statement is that it properly exposes the perspective of white, Christian heterosexual men as specific to their experience, rather than the omniscient eye of G-d they're used to presenting it as. Does anyone seriously believe Dred Scott or Plessy v. Fergueson would have been upheld by any court that had the remotest idea of what it was like to be black or a slave? Or similarly that the court would have held in Minor v. Happersett that being a citizen didn't mean you had a right to vote if you were a woman? Do we really believe that judges in these cases were "simply upholding the law" in the absence of the cultural and social prejudices of their times?