it being Memorial Day, perhaps I may comment on this

Greenwald on Kathleen Parker on Obama and bloodlines

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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:

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

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

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I started to ask, "What in hell gives Parker the right to call herself an American?"

Silly me: she was born to it. Perhaps this is an argument for amending the Constitution, but let's take that up some other time.

Instead let me put it this way:

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Dear WaPoop:

In her column Getting Bubba, Kathleen Parker talks about race and bloodlines and values in a way that would have been entirely natural in the segregated South of the 1950s and 1960s. I say this with confidence because I spent the first 22 years of my life in the South. I remember "Colored" bathrooms and drinking fountains.

Have you ever heard the phrase "all men are created equal"? If not, I believe that you will find it in an obscure document known to antiquarians as the American Declaration of Independence.

I believe that the same sentence in this obscure document begins:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

It appears that these truths are not self-evident to Kathleen Parker. She has taken it upon herself to dictate to the rest of us standards which in a less euphemistic era would have been called unAmerican.

You have given this John Bircher a platform. May I suggest that this is not a good idea? I believe that Daniel Patrick Moynihan described what you are doing as defining deviancy down.

Kathleen Parker has the right to say whatever she thinks. But perhaps unAmerican white supremacist values are inappropriate for the newspaper of record of the American capital?

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Fermion T. Clown

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It seems to me that engaging the Kathleen Parkers of the country on the merits of their arguments is a strategeric mistake, because doing so suggests that they and their ideas have substance. They do not. These people are racists. They should be called out for what they are, and ridiculed for their ignorance and dishonesty.