Centerfield

Stubbornly Unashamed

Ann Althouse thinks those singing Barack Obama's praises ought to be ashamed. Thinks we're closet racists or something:

What accounts for amazement to the point of adoration at the fact that a man possesses excellent skill at something like note taking? Is it not that he can do it and he's black? You can laugh at Noah's nuggets of gratuitous adoration, but you ought also to look at them critically and think about the implications.

Silly me. All this time I thought that articles noticing Obama's virtues simply implied a comparison to folks like oh, let's say Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Al Sharpton, George Bush," etc, etc.

But to be fair to myself, one can see how I might have mistakenly thought this, since it's demonstrably true that he seems more articulate and thoughtful (for starters) than many of the folks on that list.

Still, since Althouse has shown that we're probably racist to admire his virtues, let's all go out back and flog ourselves.

UPDATE: Now I remember what this tastes like....sour grapes. Back in the Celtics long-buried glory days, they beat the up-and-coming Pistons in the conference finals 4 games to 3, and the pivotal moment was Larry Bird's Game 5 last second steal of a careless Isaiah Thomas inbounds pass followed by the feed to DJ for the winning bucket. Sorry Pistons.

Subsequently (IIRC and I many not, after the series ended), Thomas angrily claimed that if Larry Bird wasn't white, he'd be just another player no one paid much attention to. With the shoe on the other foot, Althouse is channeling Isaiah's sour grapes, and they taste just as sour now as Isaiah's did then.