If you thought the media attacks on Sarah Palin and her family were deplorable in 2008, it's clear with the 2012 presidential campaign starting and her name being bandied about, you ain't seen nuttin' yet.
Take the Washington Post's Richard Cohen for example who penned a column Tuesday concluding, "She could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America":
In her new book, she reportedly takes Michelle Obama to task for her supposedly infamous remark from the 2008 campaign: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." [...]
Michelle Obama quickly explained herself. She was proud of the turnout in the primaries - so many young people, etc. Evan Thomas, writing perceptively in Newsweek, thought - as I did - that she was saying something else. He dug into her senior thesis at Princeton - "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" - to find a young woman who felt, or was made to feel, "more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before." This was not a statement of racism. This was a statement of fact.
It's appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact - indeed so many facts of American history.
Actually, what's appalling is how Cohen and too many others have taken this snippet from a scant number of pages of Palin's book and attacked the former Alaska governor before actually reading the entire thing.
It's also appalling that Cohen and too many others for purely political reasons quickly came to Mrs. Obama's defense in 2008 and ignored just how offensive her comments were to a large percentage of Americans across the fruited plain.
As NewsBusters reported in February 2008, here's what Mrs. Obama said:
If Cohen wasn't offended by that, and still isn't, that's his right. However, those that were bothered by those comments also have the right to be so, although clearly not in Cohen's view:
Sarah Palin teases that she might run for president. But she is unqualified - not just in the (let me count the) usual ways, but because she does not know the country. She could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America. She knows more about grizzlies than she does about African Americans - and she clearly has more interest in the former than the latter. Did she once just pick up the phone and ask Michelle Obama what she meant by her remark? Did she ask about her background? What it was like at Princeton? What it was like for her parents or her grandparents? I can offer a hint. If they were driving to Washington, they slowed down and stopped where the sign said "colored" - and the irritated Palins of the time angrily hit the horn and went on their way.
And this is what people should expect in the coming months as the presidential candidates from the Republican ranks begin to toss their respective hats into the ring.
For Palin, until she announces one way or another, she will be attacked, excoriated, and vilified by the media in ways most people at this moment probably believe unimaginable.
If her decision is to run, the hatred for her on the airwaves and in print will be like nothing America has ever witnessed.
In fact, Cohen's Tuesday column will be considered quite mild by comparison.
*****Update: NBer Red Jeep asks in the comments section, "I haven't heard of those two countries. They new?"
And therein really lies the problem in the liberal media. Folks like Cohen and his ilk still see many Americas all divided by race and ethnicity.
This divide will only disappear when the Cohens of this world see America as one and stop using race as a political tool.
Sadly, I don't expect that will happen in my lifetime. How about you?
