I was driving along I-90 in Cleveland when I heard the report that Shirley Sherrod, while motoring to Atlanta, was called by a White House intermediary and told to pull over and text her resignation from the Agriculture Department because there was a story ready to air on the “Glenn Beck Show” that night charging her with being a racist. Unlike Sherrod, I myself was unable to pull over because I was too busy pounding the steering wheel and screaming over and over, “The White House? The Glenn Beck Show?”

When it comes to Republicans demagoging race in politics, progressives can all recite the litany in their sleep: Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of the late 1960s, when the GOP began playing the race card in earnest to garner white votes via fear of blacks; Ronald Reagan making sure to announce his presidential candidacy at the town in Mississippi where three freedom riders were murdered in the early ‘60s; Lee Atwater scaring the beejeezus out of whites with Willie Horton; Newt Gingrich fueling his so-called Revolution in 1994 by stoking up the grotesque self-pity of “angry white males”; Atwater’s protégé Karl Rove keeping the ball rolling with crafty voter suppression efforts while Fox News and the conservative blogosphere kept night-riding merrily alongside cultivating “Negrophobia.”

    My point is that the above is old news and Democratic Politics 101 teaches eternal vigilance when it comes to being prepared for right-wing racial chicanery. So here’s the question: How in God’s name did the Obama administration allow fear of Glenn Beck to force them into such a mind-bogglingly stupid action? (Note: I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question.) I know, I know, as the first African-American president Obama is under considerable pressure to be particularly sensitive to issues with racial overtones. I know he – perhaps more than any previous president - must tread lightly around this greatest of all American divides; I know he can’t be expected to be the ultimate and only standard bearer for racial tolerance; I know he’s got a lot on his plate – blah, blah, blah. All of this is true but I also know he’s been a big-time enabler of Fox News by calling it out and seemingly having his actions influenced by what Fox does or may do, thereby elevating the impactof this cheesy network into the stratosphere.

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama – when faced with a potentially explosive racial matter involving Rev. Jeremiah Wright – delivered a powerful and thoughtful speech that served as a soothing antidote for a possible political powder keg. Unfortunately, as deft as he was in handling that hot potato he has been shockingly ham-fisted in dealing with the two most racially-centered issues of his presidency. First, the Henry Louis Gates matter, when – before he knew the facts – he blurted out how the “police acted stupidly” in confronting Gates on his own porch. And now this one, where his administration, following the clumsy lead of the erratic NAACP, essentially fired an absolutely wonderful woman – again, before he knew the facts - based on a ridiculous “news story” from a discredited website which was winding its way to the televised lips of a  dry-drunk Mormon nutcase.

    The way I see it, that’s two strikes on Obama in the game of racial politics. Of course, Rachel Maddow and Eugene Washington spent a couple of nights tsk-tsking Fox News, citing chapter and verse as to its numerous sins and smirking about the irony and transparency of how the race card was being played by Hannity and company. “It’s all so absurd, don’t you agree, Gene, and truly scary, too.”

Well, to me, the only thing absurd about this situation was the Obama administration’s ghastly handling of it. It’s all well and good to trash Fox News about race, but that’s a briar patch they can’t wait to get tossed into and roll around in forever – especially if Roger Ailes and the boys can make a laughingstock out of Obama. And the only thing truly scary about this incident is how glass of a jaw Obama seems to have as the Fox News/wacky blogosphere continues to sucker punch him.

Instead of providing thoughtful, measured leadership on such an important matter, Obama appears to be allowing himself to get played like a cheap fiddle. But let’s look on the bright side. Maybe it will turn out that the goofy conservative “activist” Andrew Breitbart who started this all actually did Obama a favor by humiliating his administration so thoroughly that Barack forgets about playing these “duck and cover” games with Fox News and – with courage and intelligence - starts genuinely leading America out of its racial wilderness.