Maureen Dowd’s column in Saturday’s NY Times calls a spade a spade (no, this is not a racial slur).

She writes:

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

[snip]

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Dowd’s piece gives a little history of the South’s failed efforts to fight on the wrong side of national moral issues since the Civil War.

Obama, as an educated, eloquent, and erudite mixed race black man is the redneck’s nightmare come true.

For the rest of us, he’s our last great hope for rescuing our country from the lying maws of the stupid, selfish, and snide.