Cooper's CNN Producer Warns of Racial 'Knife' Fight on Obama

On CNN's AC-360 blog, Anderson Cooper's senior producer Barclay Palmer conflated Karl Rove's critique of Barack Obama and Don Imus's latest racial radio flap into a racial knife fight: "anyone who thinks that Obama’s presumptive victory in the Democratic primary means we’re in a post-racial America might want to think again. Race will play the falling knife in this… race. And you can bet your country club membership, we’re just getting started."

How Rove suggesting that Obama is an arrogant country-club elitist puts you in "nappy-headed ho" territory is a mystery outside the liberal media tent. Not only that, but Rove is apparently packing a blade and waving it at Obama's throat. The liberal media apparently plan to spend the next few months breathlessly waiting for every Republican criticism of Obama that can be construed (or misconstrued) as an attack on Obama's blackness. Here's the whole blog post:

From Don Imus, defender of African Americans: “I meant he was being picked on because he’s black.” That’s how the radio jock explained his comment about the half dozen arrests of suspended Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam Jones. “What color is he?” Imus had asked. When told that Jones is African-American, Imus said, “Well, there you go. Now we know.”

What do we know?

On the same day, Karl Rove described Obama as a “coolly arrogant” country club elitist before an audience who’d know about country clubs and elitists: Republican insiders at a Capitol Hill Club breakfast.

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said, according to ABC. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

Just picture that -- Barack Obama, bi-racial son of an African dad and a single white mom, a former community organizer/Democratic vote getter in Chicago  -- now an arrogant country club guy with martini making snide comments at passers by? And that’s entertaining for its reach, and politically lethal for a presidential campaign.

Rove added McCain “needs to come right at him,” ABC reported, apparently just as Rove did.

So… anyone who thinks that Obama’s presumptive victory in the Democratic primary means we’re in a post-racial America might want to think again.

Race will play the falling knife in this… race. And you can bet your country club membership, we’re just getting started.

By the way, it might seem a little odd that a guy named "Barclay Palmer" working for Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper would be outraged at country-club elitism charges. Palmer's been featured in the New York Times high-society pages for his wedding (actually, two weddings.)