Yes, Maureen Dowd.

We may not have a “nation of cowards” on race, as Attorney General Eric Holder contended, but we may have a West Wing of cowards on race.

Although I’m somewhere between Holder and Dowd on this one: we have a national political party of cowards on race, and it’s the Democratic one.  As we’ve just had Andrew Breitbart graphically, if perhaps not quite deliberately, demonstrate.

The rest of the article is largely uninteresting (it’s a discussion of the way that the White House thoroughly messed up their reaction to the Shirley Sherrod situation), with two exceptions: first, for the complaint from a white Democrat that the White House is not culturally black enough.  While I will readily agree that Barack Obama is about as culturally African-American as I am*, there’s something subtly off-putting at hearing this from Maureen Dowd.  I can almost see her nose wrinkling in disdain at the oh-so-awful necessity… but perhaps I am allowing my generally low opinion of the self-designated liberal elite to cloud my thinking.  Perhaps.

The other exception is at the end, where Dowd demonstrates an awesome tin ear by suggesting that Shirley Sherrod become “Director of Black Outreach” for the White House.   Yes.  That will work out so well for this administration.

See also: Just One Minute, Hot Air Headlines, & Instapundit.

Moe Lane

*Actually, he’s less so.  His formative American years were raised mostly in middle-class white suburbia, and of course starting with Harvard he’s spent his life comfortably cocooned in liberal elitist privilege.  I imagine that he finds American AA culture only marginally less of the Other than he does working class white culture.  I referred to him as the Fortunate Son for a reason…

Crossposted to Moe Lane.