They say that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.  It would appear that playing the race card has become the last refuge of the desperate.  This is a sham and a shame because the charge of racism is the most powerful and stigma-laden label one can apply, personally and politically, today

Case #1, Maureen Dowd, the Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the New York Times.  Unfamiliar with her body of work, I have mentioned her before on similar terms for race baiting in her, frankly, laughable commentary (White Man’s Last Stand).    Her recent column regarding Representative Joe Wilson’s undisciplined, disrespectful, uncivil, and inappropriate jeer at the President of the United States during a live, joint session of Congress invoked the same sentiment.  Perhaps she is a provocateur for the Left as Anne Coulter is on the Right, but her Boy, Oh, Boy column is beyond the pale.

In that column, Dowd immediately reminds us that the Republican slice of Congress is not the perfect statistical representation of the country when she frames the now-famous still photo of Wilson, mouth open and finger pointing in accusation, surrounded by his colleagues (all of whom are white men) as indicative of the problems of that party.  In this instance she is right.  Undoubtedly, the Republican Party is accurately described as a bunch of “old white guys” if one limits oneself to the criteria age, race, and sex.  However, Dowd fails to mention that Congress as a whole is, rightly or wrongly, underrepresented by women and racial minorities. So suggesting that Democrats are much better in this regard is like saying I am much better at golf than my neighbor because I shot a 102 and he shot a 114.

From then on Dowd goes downhill, fast.  She makes the transition from fact to fiction in the blink of an eye when she states, “But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”  No, not fair, Ms Dowd, clearly not fair. “Boy” was unspoken in that it was never uttered. Never.  As in, pulled out of thin air.  As in fiction. As in, ironically, a lie.

She then presumes to know what is in Wilson’s head and heart when she supposes that Wilson, “…clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president…”  Clearly?  Did she interview him? Did he state as much after the speech on a hot mic or in a moment of candor? No, instead, Dowd takes exactly five pieces of information to make the transition from fiction writer to mind reader and priestess.   Wilson is Caucasian from South Carolina, is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, voted to keep South Carolina’s flag, and denounced Strom Thurmond’s love child.  From this she implies Wilson is the epitome of opposition to a Obama, a racist power structure unable to deal with having a black president.

By that reasoning, President Obama, with a Muslim dad, born overseas,  who associated with an admitted terrorist, a slum lord, and an extremist minister, and went to Harvard must be a corrupt, America-hating Communist Muslim racist, right? Wrong.  Both are absurd inferences from select circumstantial evidence (again, ironically, Dowd even mentions these scurrilous accusations in her piece apparently unaware she had committed the same sin.)

Case #2, former President Jimmy Carter.  Carter has long gone from the fine ex-president using his personal time and resources to help all those he wanted to during his presidency to resembling a noisy gong.  Whereas he held back little in openly criticizing a standing president (traditionally a no-no) when he now has taken aback by others who do so.  Carter, in an interview with NBC News believes that, “…an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man…”  As a Southerner, he no doubt has special insight into the cultural climate and tradition of racial tension in the South (indeed he claims as much).  Perhaps the sight of overly white working class crowds at tea parties is unsettling (even Bill O’Reilly wondered why they were overwhelmingly white) to a sensitive liberal Southerner, but his analysis, from the excerpts we have at least, ignores evidence to the contrary. 

President Carter seems to forget Obama actually won the 2008 presidential campaign (in doing so winning more whites than the last two Democratic candidates) and had very high approval ratings for the first few months of his presidency.  He seems to have forgotten the oppositional animus leveled at both Bush and Clinton, two moderates who nonetheless managed to generate acute partisanship for both political and personal reasons.  Incredulous as it may seem, Carter, of all people, seems to forget that all presidents’ popularity suffers when the economic outlook of the country is poor. 

Though the full interview may flesh out his reasoning, he seems to follow the sentiment pouring out of the Democratic Party in light of the Wilson outburst: criticism of Barack Obama is probably the result of racism.  Apparently, those who think this cannot even consider that a man who ran as a moderate, and won over the much desired independent swing voters, may have alienated those very voters with his lavish spending, big government traditional liberal outlook, and audacious-but-ambiguous transformative proposals, all in a time when we are being told that we are in the greatest recession since the Great Depression.  Or on a more personal level, is it possible that, despite an addictive smile, gift for communicating and an undeniable charm, perhaps some have been turned off by a man who hesitated to give vocal support to seekers of democracy in rigid theocracy overseas but clumsily weighed in on a local police issue in a Boston suburb? 

As we all know, racism exists, and it shall forever exist as long as humans have the ability to manifest bias and prejudice in their interpersonal relationships.  To claim or imply that it is the motivator for the majority of criticism, as both Carter and Dowd have, is to be either completely ignorant of reality in the United States in the year 2009 or so skeptical, so paranoid, so pessimistic about one’s fellow man that functioning in such a shallow and flawed country must be such a daily drudgery that only the stoutest of us can endure without considering emigrating away.

Or maybe there is a middle ground. Perhaps the accusation of racism is just a throwaway argument which is as utilitarian as the cries of “witch” in Puritan New England or “Communist” in the Cold War.  Like the accusation of rape, it requires no proof initially, immediately classifies the accuser as a victim, and leaves a stain on the accused that is hard to remove, regardless of accuracy.  When disproven the accuser can simply shrug and say “Maybe I was wrong.” without fear of punishment while the guiltless are left scraping together their reputation. 

In this sense it is a reckless and intensely unfair incrimination which belies the insecurity and bankrupt arguments of those who would wield it.  But every time the race card is dealt, it loses its power just a little bit. While this is not comforting to those on the receiving end, it serves as a potential red flag, a clear indication that things are not going well for a movement.  Just as winning football teams do not complain about the refs when they win, those holding the policy high ground would not openly accuse their  opponents of racism without a good deal of undisputable empirical evidence.  The red flags of Dowd and Carter may indeed be the white flags of left-leaning domestic policy whose argument has been lost in the court of public opinion.