This takes racism to its extreme. How in God's name could you write the things you did regarding Michelle Obama based on a paper she wrote in 1985? It is patently ridiculous an attempt to write or say anything to defeat Obama. I include you with all those so called "less educated, white folks" that have supposedly embraced Mrs. Clintorn. They are just praying that McClain faces Clinton rather than Obama in November. NOW ADMIT IT!

You don't know a thing about Hitchens if you think he prefers Clinton. He wrote a plolemic agains the Clintons, or "America's Worst Family" in 1999. He's probably more concerned that Obama's shady associations, and somewhat questionable judgement on some issuse will lead to a Clinton presidency. In fact he has predicted a Clinton presidency out of the shear ruthlessness of the Clintons, not at all out of any affection.

I don't think the Obamites are going to help by crying racism when Obama is attacked. It's going to get more intense before the general election.

Hitchens doesn't care about anything but himself. He doesn't care if his screeds are supported by any truth or evidence; all he wants is to be an agent provocateur and inspire lots of anger and outrage, and thus get more people to read his shit. Years ago when he attacked the defenseless and innocuous British queen mother when she was in her 90s, I knew he had no moral center whatsoever. He is scum.

He is one of the reasons I have no respect for Vanity Fair or Slate.

If Hitchens had indeed predicted another Clinton presidency, he sure is working hard to make the prophecy come true. The far-fetchedness of Hitchens' thesis on a paper by a 20-year old, his militant omnipotence in asking the question he's so very sure everyone else had been deliberately refraining from asking, and his persistence in returning to the question of race with regard to Obama should alert to Christopher's need to feed his own relevance by writing increasingly outrageous things.

When the Obamas are attacked for racial reasons, or race enters into the substance of the attacks, then yes, his supporters are going to speak up and call 'racism.'

Get used to that. Get used to MORE of it if the racially-motivated attacks "get more intense before the general election," too.

Well, I guess it is convenient that the Obama's are of African decent then. That way if he screws up his campaign and people point it out, He and his people can claim that they are only pointing it out because they are racist. If I, as a caucasian decent, were to stay in a church where the Preacher preached the stuff that Rev. Wright preached concerning the white people in this country, I would be dead in the water. And if my caucasion wife also wrote a paper that backed up the preacher and made some poorly phrased statements, I would be finished in politics for the rest of my life. I for one will not be looking at the color of the skin of the candidate, but at the content of their heart and character. And unfortunately, Mr. Obama has not shown, to me anyways, that he offers this country anything that we cannot get from the other candidates in better quanities. If fact, he has shown me that he has some poor decision making on his part, and that scares me from even considering to put him into the leading position of the free world for fear he could put this country into a worse position than we currently are in. Well, now I step forward to be branded a hate-mongering, racist just for pointing out, what I believe, is a short coming of the black candidate for President of the United States.

The racism comes from holding a black man to a far higher standard than any white person would be held to. You can see it here in Hitchen's piece. He plays six degrees of separation to insinuate that Obama supports genocide against the Jews.

If you were to trace anybody's associations and works back through history then you're going to find some pretty ugly things. For example, have you ever admired Charles Lindbergh? Then you must be a murderous Nazi. Of course games like that are ridiculous. But that doesn't stop large swaths of the media and political classes from doing this to Obama pretty much constantly for the last 2 months. Why is only the black man who has to answer for all the stupid things that some other black man has said in the past?

And as for Wright, what he said is no more odious than what Robertson, Falwell et al say on a regular basis, so why are those people demigods in the Republican party while Wright is a "radical"? It seems to me the only answer is that he's black. I'm a privileged white male, but even I can see that blacks can't get away with half the shit that a white person can get away with. If that's not racism, then I don't know what is.

trjones, Well Said.

However, I'm not sure you can claim this is a mere extrapolation. Obama clearly knew of, and likely, often heard, Wright's divisive paranoid ramblings. And, he apparently never spoke out against them or even engaged the reverend in a debate on the merits of his views.

Obama's problem is that he wants it both ways: he wants to be a member of this church and the community that goes along with it and to rise up above the fray. I found his refusal to disown Wright during his original speach. I am not sure how one can claim to be truly inclusive, while their spiritual advisor is extraordinarily exclusive.