I first heard Run-D.M.C.’s “Rock Box” on WRCT when I was all of 12 years old. Since then, I doubt there have been more than a handful of days that have passed where I’ve not listened to hip hop. While I have described a person’s hair as “nappy,” (myself about 10 years ago) I’ve never called anyone a “ho” or the “n word.” I guarantee the same can not be said of recently-sacked shock jock Don Imus, but that fact wasn’t enough to stop a passel of would-be defenders from suggesting that hip hop lyrics are to blame (and justification for) the “nappy-headed hos” comment that resulted in Imus’ firing.

When I first started hearing about this argument, I had an immediate flashback to the Swift Boat liars and their absurd yet ultimately successful smearing of John Kerry during the last Presidential campaign. Both are arguments that should have never seen the light of day, relegated to the fever swamps of Free Republic and Little Green Racists. That garbage like this became a legitimate topic of conversation is a sad comment on the state of the media. Truth has been sacrificed to buzz, judgement outsourced to those with an agenda.

It’s no coincidence that leading the charge on hip hop was the same person who went on national television in 2004, and suggested that John Kerry shot himself in Vietnam to qualify for a medal, Michelle Malkin:

One dumb radio/television shock jock’s insult is a drop in the ocean of barbaric filth and anti-female hatred on the radio.

Imus gets a two-week suspension. What kind of relief do we get from this deadening, coarsening, dehumanizing barrage from young, black rappers and their music industry enablers who have helped turn America into Tourette’s Nation?

But this isn’t about Imus; he had few to no defenders during his time in limbo. This is about muddying the water enough to prevent a real discussion on racism, (make no mistake, Imus’ statements were far more racist than sexist) and setting up a firewall to protect other white racist loudmouths like Glen Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, and others who feel it is their privilege to spout bigoted rhetoric about minorities. After all, what would any of their shows be without pandering to the Klan-ish underbelly of the oppressed white majority?

The last time this country had a clear opportunity to confront and discuss racism was of course in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What should have been a been a starting point for an honest accounting of how the poor and minorities are treated here instead devolved into a race to the racist bottom with everyone from Boortz to Barbara Bush rushing to blame the victims. Some quotes I pulled at the time:

Mark Williams: “They didn’t have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane….The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government — trapped there, I’m using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help.”

Rep. Tom DeLay, chatting with a couple of young evacuees who are now living in a tent in Houston: “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”

Steve Sailer: “In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren’t blacks.”

Rep. Richard Baker: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

Sen. Rick Santorum: “There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Robert Tracinski: “But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don’t, because they don’t own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.”

In addition to these obvious “give them enough rope” quotes, there was a more insidious line of attack that consisted of finding a few cases of people misusing FEMA emergency debit cards and amplifying them at the expense of proper coverage of FEMA’s own fraud and waste enabled by the President when he allowed Brownie to run the agency. Blame the victim, obscure establishment complicity, repeat as needed. The pattern is as clear as can be, and it works.

So why on earth is Barak Obama helping to perpetuate it?

Obama: Blacks as guilty as Imus / He appeals to African Americans to stop using same degrading speech as shock jock (New York Times 4/22/07)

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois told several hundred black political organizers Saturday that African Americans had been “complicit in diminishing ourselves” by talking about blacks in the same sort of degrading terms that the radio host Don Imus recently used to describe the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

“I’ve heard those words around the kitchen tables,” Obama said, speaking to members of the Rev. Al Sharpton‘s group, the National Action Network. “All of us have been complicit in diminishing ourselves, and engaging in the kind of self-hatred that keeps our young men and young women down. That’s something we have to talk about in this election.”

While Obama is right that the issue of race should get a full airing in the upcoming election, his timing and emphasis only reinforce the ability of Malkin et al to muddy otherwise clear waters. Whether African Americans as a whole are “diminishing” themselves by making and buying music that contains strong language has nothing to do with Don Imus, a white member of the media who doesn’t listen to hip hop. I can’t understand what Obama hopes to accomplish by cosigning the right’s ugly smear-by-association and assigning blame to members of his own race, as if he can’t tell the difference between art and journalism. But now, just as when he triangulated against his own party on war funding only to see the lunatic John McCain use him as an example Democrats should follow, Limbaugh and Malkin can continue their racist nonsense and point to Obama as “one of them” who agrees. Fantastic. Rather than an open and honest debate about race relations, we get another round of blame the victim with Obama as political cover.

I’d refer to this incident as Obama looking for his “Sistah Souljah moment,” but his entire campaign has been a three-month-long Sistah Souljah moment. What else can I say about the only person who learned more wrong lessons from the Clinton era than Hillary?