Frank Rich sounds a lot like Cornel West

Frank Rich has written an article for the New York Magazine titled "Obama's Original Sin" that is sure to fire up every nerve on the poutragers. Its a long one and I'm going to keep my comments brief. I'll not even say much about the title that - due to some of my own personal religious struggles - offends me deeply. Here's the part where Rich really hits below the belt.

While he has never lusted after money — he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen — he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

Rich thinks he's uncovered "the dirty secret of Obama's background." Since when is it a "secret" that Obama went to law school at Harvard and that many people in his administration (and every other one for that matter) attended Ivy League schools? And Frank, in case you missed it, Michelle is an Ivy Leaguer too.

Of course, attending an Ivy League school is demonstrable proof that one is an elitist. Never mind that with that description, Rich is validating a particularly noxious Tea Party meme...the idea that an education at one of the top schools in the US is something to look down on. It brings to mind the "dumber and dumbest" mantra that seems to be all the rage.

Notice in that last sentence that Rich felt the need to bring race into the discussion. As I pointed out - Obama fell pretty hard for a certain graduate of both Princeton and Harvard. As a matter of fact, he married her 19 years ago. She just doesn't happen to be white. And then there's that guy Eric Holder, who graduated from Columbia. How about Sonya Sotomayor, who went to Princeton and Yale?

So why the reference to "white guys?" Oh yeah, Cornel West already explained that one to us.

I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin.

Its all unadulterated bullshit! President Obama doesn't see the world exactly as they do and he doesn't do exactly what they want him to do. So he must be an elitist who falls for white guys.

What this all comes down to is that President Obama values the contributions of smart people. After 8 years of George W., I thought that would be something we saw as a good thing. But when those people happen to be smarter than Frank Rich or Cornel West, they have a problem with it.