Wilentz Jumps the Shark.

“The Obama campaign has yet to reach bottom in its race-baiter accusations…They promise to continue until they win the nomination, by any means necessary.” Taylor Marsh, Ph.D? A Clinton supporter from Day One, he at first dismissed Obama as merely the newest in a long tradition of “beautiful losers,” like Adlai Stevenson and Bill Bradley. (If you come ’round here often, you can probably guess that didn’t sit too well with me. In fact, it’s basically the same argument recently made by friend and colleague David Greenberg, before he went the way of the Great White Hope.) Well, if today’s TNR piece is any indication, historian Sean Wilentz only knows how to lose ugly. Despite the fact that Wilentz has been ranting worse than Krugman for most of this election cycle, I’ve been inclined to give him a pass, partly as a professional courtesy of sorts to a well-esteemed historian of whom I once thought quite highly, and partly because of his well-publicized Dylan fandom. Well, no more. Wilentz has been writing increasingly blatant pro-Clinton spin pieces throughout the campaign, which is his wont as a Clinton supporter, I suppose. But here he’s penned a shrill and intemperate screed which, frankly, is more embarrassing than anything else. It’s the type of angry, weirdly conspiratorial rant you’d expect to be written by an anonymous, and possibly drunk, Salon poster, not one of the more venerable American historians in the profession.

Am I overstating the case? Well, let’s take a look at some of the spleen-venting on display here: “After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama’s promises of a pure, soul-cleansing ‘new’ politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp–over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress–will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.” Calculated, deeply dishonest conduct? Ploy? Manipulative illusion? Tell us what you really think, Prof. Wilentz.

And that’s just the first paragraph. It gets worse. Check out this unsightly sentence: “As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign’s most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads.” Riiight. I really started to buy your case after that fifth negative adjective or so.

I’d spend time refuting Wilentz point for point if I thought he was trying to make a reasonable case here. But he spends most of the article just shrieking “race baiter race baiter race baiter!“, punctuated with occasional whiny, Clintonesque accusations of pro-Obama media bias. (One of the many targets of Wilentz’s wrath, Frank Rich, has recently pointed out the problems with that line of argument.) But, in general terms, in order to buy what Wilentz is selling here, you’d have to believe all of the following:

That there’d be no conceivable political advantage whatsoever for the Clinton campaign to paint Barack Obama as solely “the black candidate” (“It has never been satisfactorily explained why the pro-Clinton camp would want to racialize the primary and caucus campaign.“) Hmm. Anyone have a theory on this? Dick Morris? Hitch? I can’t for the life of me imagine how such a tack might’ve helped the Clintons, here in our post-racial America.

That there were no racial overtones whatsoever to Billy Shaheen and Mark Penn et al, just sorta accidentally invoking drug hysteria, even once the campaign got explicitly Willie Horton with it and called Obama weak on mandatory minimums.

That, similarly, there were no racial overtones whatsoever to Bill Clinton comparing Obama’s huge Carolina victory to that of Jesse Jackson, something that bothered even ostensibly neutral observers such as Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald.

That people (such as myself) who at first wondered in shock if a Bradley effect had anything to do with the fifteen-point New Hampshire turnaround were actually operating on orders from the Obama campaign.

That African-Americans unaffiliated with the Obama campaign such as Jim Clyburn and Donna Brazile, among countless others, who took umbrage at the dismissive tone of the LBJ/fairy tale remarks (which I’ve said were not racist, just tone-deaf) were also “deep undercover,” at the sinister behest of Obama’s race-baiting shock troops.

That the Clinton campaign has been the unfairly aggrieved party throughout this election cycle, and would never dream of indulging in “outrageously deceptive advertisements.”

That rather than trying to defuse racial controversies as they’ve emerged during the race, Sen. Obama has personally sought to exploit them for nefarious purposes.

That Clinton staffers just innocuously sent out the Somaligate photo to Drudge, having no earthly idea at all that it might play to the whispering campaign about Sen. Obama’s religion. I mean, who woulda thunk it?

And so on. Meanwhile, in between the purging of bile (Obama’s “cutthroat, fraudulent politics,” “the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since Willie Horton, “the most insidious” since Reagan in Philadelphia), Wilentz trots out stale and rather sad race-conspiracy talking points from pro-Clinton hives like TalkLeft, such as Jesse Jackson Jr. chiding superdelegate Emanuel Cleaver for standing in the way of a black president. (Please. As if female superdelegates weren’t receiving similar calls from the Clinton camp. Clinton even made the explicit gender case — again — in the debate tonight.) I dunno, perhaps this is what you should expect from a thinker who cites Philip Roth as an expert on black-white relations. (Although, fwiw, Roth’s voting Obama.) Nevertheless, Wilentz has crossed over the line here from politically-minded historian to unhinged demagogue, and made himself to look absolutely ridiculous in the process. It’ll be hard to read his historical work in the future without this hyperbolic and ill-conceived polemic in mind.

Bill, your Freudian Slip is Showing.

“Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice in ’84 and ’88…” Uh, but Bill, nobody mentioned Jesse Jackson. President Clinton tries to race-card it up until the last dog dies. But, hey, shame on the media for injecting race into the campaign, right? It is time…for them…to go.

Update: The Atlantic‘s Matt Yglesias had a pretty great line about this: “After all this time being told by the Clinton campaign that Barack Obama is some kind of closet Reagan-worshipping right-winger, it’s a bit confusing to be told that he’s the second coming of Jesse Jackson, too.“

Update 2: Jesse Jackson says, Let’s move on, while Chris Hitchens argues, What did you expect?

Update 3: If you were perusing politlcal sites on Sunday, you may have heard many angry Clinton supporters claim that they’d watched the full exchange, that the President was asked directly about the “first black president” prior to the clip — hence, “that’s just bait too” — and that the media was distorting his remarks because they hate Clinton. Not surprisingly at this point, this all turned out to be a pack of bald-faced lies.

Clinton’s Racial Provokatsiia.

“We seem to be at the point where there are now two credible possibilities. One is that the Clinton campaign is intentionally pursuing a strategy of using surrogates to hit Obama with racially-charged language or with charges that while not directly tied to race nonetheless play to stereotypes about black men. The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign is extraordinarily unlucky and continually finds its surrogates stumbling on to racially-charged or denigrating language when discussing Obama.” TPM‘s Josh Marshall ponders the last week in politics, while going on to defend Clinton’s “fairy tale” remark as untinged by race. (I would agree — I found it dismaying for other reasons, which I’ve explained twice, and which The Nation‘s David Corn also finds reprehensible — the Rovian swift-boating of Senator Obama’s stance on the Iraq war.)

Another commenter at TPM aptly characterized what the Clintons have been doing here (the “rope-a-dope” strategy I outlined in the comments the other day.): “I think that the Clintons’ anti-Obama strategy is more subtle than commentators are realizing. It is in the nature of a ‘provokatsiia’, as the Russians say…Such comments are a provocation, waving a red cloak in front of the Obama people. When they respond angrily with charges of racism, suddenly they look like Jesse Jackson redux…just the kind of angry, militant black folks who scare white people…The whole point was to get the Obama people to respond angrily, which they did. Clintons win.” And we all get dirty.

Update: “Is it possible that accusing Obama and his campaign of playing the race card might create doubt in the minds of the moderate, independent white voters who now seem so enamored of the young, black senator? Might that be the idea?” The Post‘s Eugene Robinson sees a similar strategy at work.

Update 2: As does Margaret Carlson: “While it isn’t clear from whose sleeve the card was pulled, it is likely it wasn’t from the person with the most to lose. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign had taken only one shot at Obama, it might have been blown off as a mistake. But four shots constitutes a pattern.”

Update 3: As does the New York Times: “By the time the campaigns got to New Hampshire, the Clinton team was panicking…It was clearly her side that first stoked the race and gender issue.“

The Victim Card…Again.

“I regret the way that this matter has been used,’ Clinton told reporters. ‘The comments about it are baseless and divisive. I was personally offended at the approach taken that was not only misleading but unnecessarily hurtful.’” When asked about Congressman Jim Clyburn’s dissatisfaction with her recent remarks on the civil rights movement, Sen. Hillary Clinton suggests she‘s the aggrieved party here, and, worse, that a vast Obama conspiracy is to blame for people — including Clyburn — finding fault with her remarks. “She suggested reporters consider the sources of the criticism, much of which has come from the black community. ‘I think it clearly came from Senator Obama’s campaign and I don’t think it’s the kind of debate we should be having in our campaign,’ she said.” Wow. I mean, I’m running out of ways to be surprised here. Isn’t this the exact same cynical and misleading strategy that President Clinton just accused Senator Obama of running? This is just getting depressing.

Update: On Meet the Press, Sen. Hillary Clinton continues the “Vast Obama Conspiracy” defense. “‘This is, you know, a, a — an unfortunate story line that the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully,’ she said. ‘They’ve been putting out talking points. They’ve been making this — they’ve been telling people, in a very selective way, what the facts are.” Uh, swift-boat much? What evidence do you have that the Obama team is responsible for people finding your recent actions dismaying? And why not just say your words could be misconstrued, apologize, and move on? Instead, we get: “Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign is deliberately distorting this.” What media reports? (The closest I could find was this, when an Obama spokesman suggested there might be a “pattern” here. Well, given Billy Shaheen, mandatory minimums, “imaginary hip black friend,” and such readily misconstruable remarks as “fairy tale” and “kid,” and the LBJ “It takes a president” history lesson, I can see why one might think so. But I see little other evidence that the Obama campaign is responsible for the general dismay surrounding the Clintons right now. These people have no sense of shame.

Update 2: Obama’s response: “‘The notion that this is our doing is ludicrous.” Meanwhile, the Clinton people point to this memo, drawn up by Amaya Smith, Obama’s press secretary in SC but not released to the press. Sigh…this may well be the dumb mistake the Clintons have been baiting the Obama team to make. Still, having read through the memo, I’m not seeing any “deliberate distortions” of the Clintons’ behavior, so much as a litany of the unfortunate incidents that have been emanating from the Clinton camp. (I hadn’t heard the Trippi v. Penn “cocaine” one. Cute.) Plus, the memo seems to follow the concerned responses of leaders such as Jim Clyburn and Donna Brazile — in fact, that’s the newspeg. Hard to say that it created them.

Update 3: Hillary Clinton is defended by BET’s Robert Johnson, who also sees fit to bring up the drug spectre again. “‘As an African American, I’m frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing but he said it in his book’…Clinton’s campaign says Johnson was not referring to Obama’s past drug use. Meanwhile, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, another African-American supporter of Clinton, said of the comments, ‘Sometimes people say things that aren’t sanctioned…I can’t speak for Bob.’“

Update 4: Johnson — previously a stalwart foe of the estate tax, by the way — also went on to compare Obama to Sidney Poitier, and not in a good way. Yep, a classy day all around for Team Clinton. I have to think this’ll backfire.

Update 5: Johnson’s official response to his earlier comment: “Johnson said it would be ‘simply irresponsible and incorrect’ to read his words that way. ‘My comments today were referring to Barack Obama’s time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else.’” Now, read back into the original quote, that clearly doesn’t make a lick of sense. But who’s got his back? Why, Bill Clinton: “I think we have to take him at his word.” It’s not a lie if you believe it, right, Mr. President?

I’ll take my imaginary friend over a real Clinton.

False Hopes and Fairy tale redux: “If you have a social need, you’re with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you’re young and you have no social needs, then he’s cool.” And the Clinton camp sinks even lower. A Clinton adviser denigrates Barack Obama as little more than a “Bagger Vance“-ish figment of devil-may-care young people’s imagination to The Guardian‘s Daniel Freedland, insulting Sen. Obama and the political activism of young voters in the process. What was Margaret Carlson’s line about Al Gore in 2000? “[W]hen Gore descends to the politics he disdains, he can’t find the level beneath which he will not sink.” Looks like it applies here as well.

Well, “Clinton adviser,” You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. And if you “imagine” all Obama voters are just going to flock back to Sen. Clinton’s candidacy in droves — should she even win the nomination, which is a very open question — if this type of garbage keeps up, it might be time for a reality check.

Update: Senator Clinton is now referring to Obama as a “part-time state senator.” Uh, what the hell? From the NYT, June 2007: “[As State Senator,] Mr. Obama helped deliver what is said to have been the first significant campaign finance reform law in Illinois in 25 years. He brought law enforcement groups around to back legislation requiring that homicide interrogations be taped and helped bring about passage of the state’s first racial-profiling law. He was a chief sponsor of a law enhancing tax credits for the working poor, played a central role in negotiations over welfare reform and successfully pushed for increasing child care subsidies.“

Wow, I must say, that’s quite a lot for an “imaginary hip black friend” and “part-time state senator” to get done (and considerably more than Clinton — my Senator from New York — has to show for her own legislative career.) So where is she getting “part-time” from? Or has she just decided to glom on to Karl Rove’s recent “lazy” motif? (And speaking of that anti-Obama Rove piece, consider the source. Why would Rove be backing Clinton’s play these days anyway? Perhaps it’s because she’s good for thousands of GOP votes coming out of the woodwork in the general election, and everyone knows it.) Update: Now Newt’s doing it, too.

My disgust deepens.

Ron Paul, Head Case.

“[T]he newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles…seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him — and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays.” McNulty might be acting like a nutjob these days, but, as TNR‘s James Kirchick writes today, he still has nothing on Ron Paul. “In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the ‘X-Rated Martin Luther King’ as a ‘world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,’ ‘seduced underage girls and boys,’ and ‘made a pass at’ fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that ‘Welfaria,’ ‘Zooville,’ ‘Rapetown,’ ‘Dirtburg,’ and ‘Lazyopolis’ were better alternatives.” (When asked about Kirchick’s story today, Paul called King “one of my heroes because he believed in nonviolence and that’s a libertarian principle,” but he didn’t exactly disavow this garbage: “Paul’s position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.” Sigh. The libertarians among us, and the libertarian philosophy, deserve a more sane spokesman.

Mitt’s Muskie Moment.

“I can remember when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from — I think it was law school, but I was driving home — going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept.” Regarding the thorny question of the Mormon church and race (discussed earlier here), Mitt Romney, to his credit, addressed the issue about as well as can be expected this morning during the Russert treatment on Meet the Press, even going so far as to tear up a little (Video). My, we’ve come a long way from the days of Ed Muskie. Update: Must be catching…Now Clinton’s crying too. Update 2: And Romney again.

Hey Mitt: Racism is a Latter-Day Sin.

“It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership…It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization.” Slate‘s Chris Hitchens explains why Mitt Romney needs to start being more forthright about his Mormonism. I’m inclined to agree — if nothing else, he needs to clear the air as Kennedy did in his 1960 address to Southern Baptists (a strategy Romney avoided in his run against JFK’s little brother in 1994.)

A self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, Governor Romney has recently been publicly tsk-tsking Barack Obama’s candor about his drug use. But I doubt I’m the only American who’d feel more sanguine about my child experimenting with marijuana than he or she espousing some of the notions that the Mormon Church declared holy writ within my lifetime. “[I]n antebellum Missouri and preaching against abolition, Smith…announced that there had been a third group in heaven during the battle between God and Lucifer. This group had made the mistake of trying to remain neutral but, following Lucifer’s defeat, had been forced into the world and compelled to ‘take bodies in the accursed lineage of Canaan; and hence the negro or African race.’ Until 1978, no black American was permitted to hold even the lowly position of deacon in the Mormon Church, and nor were any (not that there were many applicants) admitted to the sacred rites of the temple.” As Hitchens aptly points out, “Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.” Update: Facing a surprising (to him) Huckabee surge among Christian conservatives, Mitt Romney announces he’ll discuss his faith in a major speech next Thursday, akin to Kennedy’s 1960 address. I presume he won’t be delving into this former aspect of his faith, but you never know.

Reagan gets Racial.

“The upshot was that by 1980, race and ideology had become so commingled that one’s stand on racial issues served as a proxy for one’s partisan preference. Previously, economic issues had been the chief dividing line between the parties. By 1980, though, according to the Edsalls, the changes that followed the civil rights movement had crystallized, and racial politics figured just as strongly.” Slate‘s resident historian David Greenberg weighs in on the recent furor at the NYT (and elsewhere) over Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign kickoff speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the 1964 Schwerner-Chaney-Goodman murders. (Coincidence? Sheah.) Therein, Greenberg correctly and succinctly argues that Reagan’s “I believe in states’ rights” was, in an apt turn of phrase, “a dog whistle to segregationists.“

Honestly, I’m not really sure how you could dispute this, unless you want to argue that Reagan and his political handlers were completely ignorant about the civil rights struggle, massive resistance, and the significance of Philadelphia, Miss. in those struggles. (Of course, then you’d have to explain how Reagan remained blissfully unaware of the fact his 1966 gubernatorial bid often relied on similar loaded language.) Was Reagan a racist? I dunno, that’s not the issue. Did Reagan rely on coded racial messages to appeal to white conservatives, akin to what Dubya does these days with pro-lifers and Dred Scott? Obviously.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Wes).

“Like his peers Zach Braff, Noah Baumbach (who directed the excellent Squid and the Whale and co-wrote Life Aquatic), and Sofia Coppola (whose brother Roman helped write Darjeeling Limited), Wes Anderson situates his art squarely in a world of whiteness: privileged, bookish, prudish, woebegone, tennis-playing, Kinks-scored, fusty. He’s wise enough to make fun of it here and there, but in the end, there’s something enamored and uncritical about his attitude toward the gaffes, crises, prejudices, and insularities of those he portrays.“

Also in Slate Jonah Weiner takes issue with the racial politics of Wes Anderson’s oeuvre. Food for thought — I thought Weiner scored some of his best points early on: “In every film he’s made, even the best ones, there’s been something kind of obnoxious about Wes Anderson. By now, critics [Note: and The Onion] have enumerated several of his more irritating traits and shticks: There’s his pervasive preciousness, exemplified by the way he pins actors into the centers of fastidiously composed tableaux like so many dead butterflies. There’s his slump-shouldered parade of heroes who seem capable of just two emotions: dolorous and more dolorous (not that there haven’t been vibrant exceptions to this). And there’s the way he frequently couples songs — particularly rock songs recorded by shaggy Europeans between 1964 and 1972 — with slow-motion effects, as though he’s sweeping a giant highlighter across the emotional content of a scene. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Richie can’t watch Margot get off a bus without Nico popping up to poke us in the ribs: ‘He loves her! And it’s killing him! See?’” Ouch.