You want some race card? Well here is some race card:
That's not messing around. Note that this is not from the Cain campaign but from "Americans for Herman Cain," a group created to support his candidacy. You've got the testimony from Rush Limbaugh, who knows a thing or two about propagating racial stereotypes, and rather than just invoking Clarence Thomas, they actually show the clip of him talking about his "high-tech lynching." You'll recall that the "lynching" Thomas suffered through was one in which his sexual harassment of Anita Hill was revealed to the world and he was criticized for it, before ascending to his lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, not one in which he was beaten, burned, and hanged from a tree until he died, but they're pretty much the same thing, right? Anyhow, Cain's supporters will now be portraying him as a similar martyr to venomous racism. But in case you're confused, here's a review of the right's current stance on that topic:
1. The primary victims of racism are white people.
2. The most vicious form of racism is when a white person is falsely accused of being a racist.
3. On rare occasions, a black person can be a victim of racism, but this only occurs when a prominent black conservative is criticized for, well, for pretty much anything. In that case, the criticism can only be motivated by the racism that liberals feel in their hearts, unlike conservatives, who all believe in the equality of all people.
What this episode highlights is how positively obsessed with race some on the right are. Limbaugh is a perfect example: He manages to find a racial subtext behind almost any policy of the Obama administration. For instance, he told his listeners over and over again that the Affordable Care Act was "reparations," Barack Obama's cruel plan to screw over white people as vengeance for the racial sins of the past. And when it turns out that multiple women have accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior -- a fact that he has acknowledged, whether you think the accusations are true or not -- and news organizations report on that fact, it just must be a racist conspiracy.
Many on the right these days are like Steven Colbert, claiming, "People tell me I'm white, but I don't know because I don't see race." Cain's popularity was supposed to be the proof. But it turns out that when they look at Cain, they see little else.
