Self-parody watch

Now, I expected those on the left to go after Republicans for being racist in this campaign. It’s a common trope when two white candidates are squaring off, but throw a crusty old white guy up against a young, charming black guy? The gloves were going to come off and the stupidity was going to come out.

Our first taste was McCain’s celebrity ad, in which Republicans were accused of playing to the subliminal fears of America’s latent racists by linking Obama to two oversexed white women. As I said at the time, this is just silly: the point the McCain camp was actually making was that Obama is more celebrity than substance–famous just for the sake of being famous. I thought this was a better ad than most of my counterparts for two reasons: it plays up McCain’s one undeniable strength (his experience), and it drove the left nuts (they sure loved those viral videos making fun of McCain, but as soon as the GOP gets into the game…that is out of bounds!).

But that controversy seems like the most reasonable thing I’ve read all campaign compared to this piece by Timothy Noah, in which he claims that “skinny” is a codeword for “black.” Or something. Perhaps Noah was being sarcastic in the piece; passages like this one read as if they came straight from The Onion:

To be thin is to be different physically. Not that there’s anything wrong, mind you, with being a skinny person. But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you want a whole family of skinny people to move in next-door? “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” an “unnamed Clinton supporter” wrote on a Yahoo politics message board.

I mean, c’mon…that’s great paro…wait, he’s being serious?

The sad fact is that any discussion of Obama’s physical appearance is going to remind white people of the physical characteristic that’s most on their minds.

Uh huh. I have a request for the Obama campaign and its supporters in the media: please continue to read racial subtext into everything. It’s one of the only ways to really get the white working class behind McCain–being told over and over again that this country remains a racist cesspool.