Hairy Reed's Dangling Participle

It would be fair, would it not, in the case of the ongoing Imusization of Senate Majority Leader Hairy Reed, to actually read what he was quoted as saying two years ago off the record? Hmmmmm?

Years later, Reid would claim that he was steadfastly neutral in the 2008 race; that he never chose sides between Barack (Obama) and Hillary (Clinton); that all he did was tell Obama that "he could be president," that "the stars could align for him." But at the time, in truth, his encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama&@=#8212;a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," as he later put it privately.

The source of much of the phony outrage over this seems to be around the word "Negro." Not a word we're fond of these days of course, and it is somewhat regrettable that the sitting ML can be quoted as such. However. He did not say "Barack Obama is a Negro." He did not say "I think it's swell for Negroes to have to eat in separate restaurants from whites, and that if they try to fight us on that, we should be allowed to turn fire hoses and dogs on the Negroes." Because, see, that's essentially what Trent Lott said that got him into trouble. That's the difference. Lott suggested that the country should have elected a man presnit who was running specifically on a segregationist platform,, a platform that essentially said that black people should be killed and maimed before they should be allowed to share public facilities with white people. Hairy Reed suggested that Obama's physical attributes and his strength at the podium might just help him win the White House. Again, it gets us back to a question I tend to ask a lot regarding Republigoats like Michael "Lexington" Steele: Are you playing stupid, or are you actually that stupid?