“Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, who is black, interprets Hillary Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad as — you knew this was coming — racist.
(…)
“I’m sorry, but this is paranoid crackpottery. I hadn’t even noticed the race of these children (‘Ah, but that only goes to show the subliminal evil of the ad!’). Is Hillary Clinton allowed to raise any questions about Barack Obama’s fitness for office, or anything else, without standing accused of racism?
“I used to think that the one unambiguously good thing about having a President Obama would be that it would be good for racial healing. Now I’m starting to think just the opposite, that any criticism of him, which is to be expected, will be interpreted by no small number of his backers as open or cloaked racism. And if he should fail in office, it will be because racists set him up, and we’ll never, ever hear the end of it…”
