This post has been edited from its original version.
Rush Limbaugh, who has been driven utterly insane by the idea of a black man in higher office, just can't take it anymore:
Obama's patriotism is not being attacked in an ad. McCain's just out there saying he's putting his own personal political ambition ahead of the country's. It's -- you know, it's just -- it's just we can't hit the girl. I don't care how far feminism's saying, you can't hit the girl, and you can't -- you can't criticize the little black man-child.
The sad part is it would be best for Obama if the media didn't actually pick this up, and McCain wasn't forced to respond to Limbaugh's comments. While the Right has spent the last few months successfully demanding that Obama apologize for everything any black person has ever done that has offended them -- McCain having to respond to this kind of racist disrespect for his opponent would simply make people sympathetic to the idea that Obama is being treated somehow "better" than McCain when the opposite is actually true. What Taylor Branch calls the inversion of history is a common tactic on the right, and Limbaugh's treatment of Obama is simply an inversion of recent history. It is the McCain campaign, not the Obama campaign, that has maintained throughout this race that biographical details should make their candidate immune from criticism.
As for Limbaugh's lamenting the fact that feminism says "you can't hit the girl," I'm sort of at a loss to explain why Limbaugh thinks that "hitting" women is the kind of thing people should be allowed to do.
-- A. Serwer
