Phaedrus, your comment is great b/c it makes it clear how the transmitter thing works. Well known “legitimate” conservative makes blatantly racist remark an insists it is a legitimate non-racist thing to say and then seeds the meme everywhere. And right now, with all that is at stake for African Americans in NOLA, what was sort of whispered and insinuated to justify white land grabs and redevelopment of Black areas now gets to be part of the mainstream debate. (Also in lots of other cities where the non-apocalyptic version of racist and classist urban redevelopment schemes are par for the course.)

I also think we’re letting Bennett off too easy on the “you could abort every black baby in this country” portion of his comments. For one thing, he’s fantasizing about genocide. Call me prejudiced but I don’t like people who fantasize about genocide—even if after they finish fantasizing they say, “but, oh I would never really do that…”