THE BARACK WITCH PROJECT

Last updated: 12:45 pm
October 10, 2008
Posted: 4:00 am
October 10, 2008

REPUBLICANS don't need to dress up for Halloween this year. They're scaring the pants off Barack Obama's followers by their mere presence. Anything they say, wear or do provokes instant cries of "RAAAAACISM!"

Wink, blink or think critical thoughts about Obama? You're a bigot!

How many racial bogeymen have Obama operatives and sympathetic journalists discovered lurking in "coded language" and attire? Let us count the ways:

* During Tuesday's presidential debate, John McCain referred to Obama as "that one." Official Obama press agitator Bill Burton sent off an e-mail blast to reporters: "Did John McCain just refer to Obama as 'that one'?" Horrors.

Taking their cue from Burton, spooked Obama supporters hyperventilated like teens on the film set of "The Blair Witch Project." "The racial undertones were subtle but unmistakable," declared Maya Wiley of the leftist Center for Social Inclusion. "McCain was tapping into a current of superiority among white voters. It was an attempt to 'otherize' Obama."

"Otherize"? Sounds like something you do to your car tires to prepare for winter. UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff was also haunted by "That One": "The phrase was meant to say, 'You and I are in the same area, but he's the outsider.' "

Memo to McCain: Next time, call him "The One."

* Earlier this week, the Associated Press disseminated an "analysis" accusing Sarah Palin of injecting a "racial tinge" into the campaign because she criticized Obama for his longtime relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Palin's comments were completely unobjectionable: "This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America."

I saw a vice presidential candidate drawing stark philosophical differences between two tickets. The AP saw Freddy Krueger with lipstick and a noose.

"Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as 'not like us' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American," the AP piece frothed.

Obama is half-black. Ayers is white. One of the Weather Underground's victims was black police officer Waverly Brown of Nyack, NY.

Where do I buy a pair of the super X-ray glasses that can detect the racism in Palin's remarks about the Obama-Ayers alliance?

* I'll have to borrow those spectacles from Time's Karen Tumulty, who spotted racist goblins in the recent McCain ad criticizing Obama for seeking advice from Fannie Mae corruptocrat Franklin Raines. "Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman," Tumulty balked in a blog post titled "McCain plays the race card."

Um, "sinister"? The ad's photos of Obama and Raines were standard shots - some with dour expressions, others smiling. The fact that Tumulty perceived them as "sinister" suggests that she should perform a self-racism exam before diagnosing anyone else.

Cont.here:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10102008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_barack_witch_project_132973.htm

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