Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Play the Race Card.

This image is from a fascinating photo essay by Anthony Karen for Mother Jones. It's about Ms. Ruth, the Aryan outfitter.

It's not a slam piece on the KKK and if you check out the essay and the audio with each picture, don't be surprised if you come away from it with a certain amount of admiration for Ms Ruth.

In the audio on the last picture, Ms Ruth talks about how the KKK would go after white men who didn't treat their families as well as they should have. Personally, I know of an instance involving my mother's sister in North Carolina, when the KKK gave her husband a good beating for not taking care of his wife and kids. That happened more than 50 years ago.

It's really worth checking out.

But it's not the KKK that I want to talk about. It's the kind of sneaky racism that's poping up in the Mainstream Media.

Who would have thought that the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal would allow thinly veiled racist remarks to disgrace their pages. They did and Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker are making big money for their garbage.

Here's some of what Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ.

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama’s problem. America is Mr.
Obama’s problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous,
ambivalent candidate from Men’s Vogue, the candidate who loves America because
of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But
has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of
country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about
D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who
flocked to Sutter’s Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in
them thar hills? There’s gold in that history.

John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school,
in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa’s knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at
least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92.

I've never gotten misty-eyed over any of those things. Does Peggy want to question my love of country? I don't know what credentials Ms. Noonan has to make her the final arbiter of someones love of country or their patriotism.

Maybe she could get me on the fact that my relatives were just enlisted men instead of Admirals. My Dad was a PFC, 100% disabled from wounds he recieved from a German 88 round at St. Lo in France. His brother was a Staff Sargent, he was put out of the war by calling artillery in on his own position after being surrounded while trying to close the Falaise Pocket. He came home with a steel plate in his head and a glass eye. He also got a battlefield commisssion to First Lieutenant and a Silver Star. My Mother's first husband was KIA in the Battle of the Bulge. I was in the Army from 72 to 75.

I'm proudly voting for Barack Obama. Want to question this "snooty lefty's" love of country, Peggy?

How about Kathleen Parker's The 'Bubba' vote in the WaPo.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American
values. And roots.

Yet, white Americans primarily—and Southerners, rural and small-town folks
especially—have been put on the defensive for their concerns with "guns, God and
gays," as Howard Dean put it in 2003. And more recently, for clinging to "guns
or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," as Obama described
white, working-class Pennsylvanians who preferred his opponent.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America
that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that
their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes
the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the
remodeling of America.

In the first place, I don't appreciate being referred to as "Bubba". I do know plenty of people who will cast their vote based solely on one or all the God, guns or gay issues, even though it's not in their own best self-interests. They are good people, but they see crap like this and it only reinforces their prejudices.

I don't know what the hell "blood equity" is supposed to mean. The only hard-won American value that I can think of is freedom and that's the thing that the Republicans have been trying to take away from us.

I can at least respect Ms. Ruth because she comes by it honestly. Noonan and Parker are just rabble-rousing for a paycheck. They should hit the streets and try to make a honest living.

On the same subject, from Editor & Publisher.

(May 18, 2008) -- Liberal bloggers and commenters at The Washington Post op-ed
section are rightly criticizing a column this week by syndicated scribe Kathleen
Parker that questions Barack Obama’s “deep-seated” Americanism. But she is only
following the footsteps of Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal who raised
similar issues three weeks ago – and was praised by NBC’s Brian Williams for a
“Pulitzer” worthy effort.

From Salon.com.

In one of the most repellent columns one will ever read, syndicated
columnist Kathleen Parker defended Fry's claim that Obama is something other
than "a full-blooded American." Advancing an argument that Atrios guest blogger
aimai aptly described as "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!," Parker
said "we now have a patriot divide" in America that "has nothing to do with a
flag lapel pin . . . or even military service." Instead:

Slate.

First Obama had to distance
himself from some bizarre comments made by his former pastor. Then he had to
explain why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin often enough to suit Charlie Gibson of ABC News. Then he had
to distance himself from a former
member of the Weather Underground to whom
he was introduced when he decided to run for the Illinois Senate but with
whom he has since had scant contact. Then he had to distance himself from Hamas,
a terrorist organization he has repeatedly condemned, simply because its chief
political adviser, Ahmed Yousefat, expressed admiration for him. Now Peggy Noonan of the Wall
Street Journal demands that Obama demonstrate he carries sufficient love
within his breast for … Sutter's Mill.

And Media Matters.

While Media Matters for America did not identify specific instances of
Obama's getting "misty-eyed" over the Wright brothers, the 1944 Allied invasion
of Europe, George Washington, the 1849 California Gold Rush -- or Henry
Ford, for that matter -- the title of his latest book,
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, suggests that
Noonan should have looked there before suggesting that Obama has yet to address
"[w]hat ... he think[s] of America." She needn't have read past the prologue to
find this:

I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the
world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and
competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial
identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think
much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not
be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least
as much as our GDP.

That's all, from a snooty, lefty, Bubba.

Later