7493: Politically Incorrect.

Colored commentary in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Harry “Negro Dialect” Reid is in the news again, this time for a Black History Month essay that appeared on his website. In the piece (featuring the clichéd title, “Black history is American history”), Reid claims to have helped integrate Las Vegas. Problem is, historians and people actually involved in the actions don’t recall Reid participating at all. Reid will probably also insist he partnered with Carter G. Woodson to introduce Negro History Week.

• Sarah Palin is demanding the firing of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for making a remark she said is offensive to people with developmental disabilities. In a January Wall Street Journal story, Emanuel called plans by liberal groups to run ads against moderate Democrats “Fucking retarded.” Emanuel has officially apologized for the statement. He probably meant to say the plans were “Fucking Palinesque.”

7438: Dumb Like Me.

Color coordination in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich continued his spiraling descent toward reality TV series contestant by declaring, “I’m Blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a Black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.” The man apparently still has some growing up to do.

• GOP leaders continue to call for the resignation of Harry Reid, comparing the Senate majority leader’s remarks about President Obama to those of former Republican leader Trent Lott, who once spoke in support of Strom Thurmond’s long-ago segregationist candidacy for president. Sorry, even Rod Blagojevich would agree Reid is not Whiter than Trent Lott.

7433: Rating Reid’s Remarks.

From The Chicago Tribune…

What Negro Problem?

By Clarence Page

What’s the big deal with Harry Reid’s comments about Obama?

President Obama says “the book is closed” on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s newly disclosed problematic praise of Obama in 2008. But Republican Chairman Michael Steele and a host of conservative pundits are not about to let it go.

“He said what? Harry and the Negro” blares a Drudge Report headline.

The conservative Weekly Standard quotes a 2002 Chicago Defender account of Obama’s criticism of former Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott on WVON — and notes ominously “If Mitch McConnell had said it…”

In other words, if current Senate GOP leader McConnell had said what Reid said, Dems would want his head.

GOP Chairman Steele, a gaffe-bag in his own right, called Reid’s remarks racist on Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC and claimed a “double standard” by Dems to give Reid a pass for “anachronistic language” that is “out of step with where America is today.”

Really, Mr. Chairman? Let us remember the context of Reid’s remarks. However blunt he may have been, he was praising Obama. Lott was praising Sen. Strom Thurmond’s defense of racial segregation laws.

And if Mitch McConnell had praised Obama the way Reid did? That would not be a gaffe; It would be a political miracle.

Elsewhere, some conservatives are comparing Obama’s defense of Reid to his call for radio host Don Imus to be fired for describing Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Yes, Obamaphobes can be that tone deaf.

Ed Morrissey at the Hot Air blog says Reid questioned Obama’s “authenticity.” No, but Reid’s conservative critics appear to think complexion and “Negro accent” are marks of “authenticity,” when such standards are convenient to their cause.

Not to say that liberals don’t do the same thing when it is convenient. Witness the questions during the early Democratic primaries about whether Obama was “black enough.” All’s fair in mudball politics.

One thing for which conservatives should thank Obama: After years of being called racist, rightly or wrongly, by prominent liberal black leaders, he’s given them opportunities to turn the tables, whether it is deserved or not.