From Media Matters:

On the edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group that aired the weekend of July 11-13, while discussing recent comments made by the Rev. Jesse Jackson about Sen. Barack Obama, host John McLaughlin said: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo — a black on the outside, a white on the inside — that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rightsstruggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"

Okay, here’s where John McLaughlin and I part ways. It’s obvious to anyone who’s followed Obama’s career trajectory that he’s more of a Chewy Chips Ahoy than an Oreo, what with his white mother and black father and . . . malleable . . . stance on FISA. Given McCain’s static positions on everything from women’s rights to perpetual war, we will be graced with similar schoolyard analogies? Are we going to eventually find out that McCain is actually a moldy pfefferneuse or a stale powdered doughnut?

Watching these know-it-all bobbleheads tossing around outdated cliches about race is like witnessing a slow motion commuter train wreck – so many old white men in pinstriped suits staggering around in a bloodied daze, confused by the rapidly changing political environment around them. Guess what, John? It’s not the 1950’s anymore. No more three-martini lunches or pinching the network secretaries in their tight A-line skirts, no more "a place for blacks, and blacks in their place."

Yes, Jesse Jackson was an idiot for whispering about cutting off Obama’s nuts while he was wearing a microphone at Fox News studios. Yes, Bernie Mac made a dumb joke at an Obama fundraiser. But these men are do not drive  the narrative; archaic white men like McLaughlin do. Propagating racial stereotypes by utilizing juvenile euphemisms highlights just how old and unhip they are.

And yet, the status quo continues. How does John McLaughlin stay on the air year after year, while we have to search the upper tiers of cable television to find Amy Goodman? As Phoenix Woman asks in the post below:

What happened to our media over the past three decades? How did we get to the point where someone like Molly Ivins couldn’t get a job as a receptionist at most major papers, while conservatively-correct dingdongs like David Brooks, Michael Gerson, Debra Saunders, William Kristol, John Tierney, and Ben Domenech are considered smart hires?

Racism couched in political discourse is, one can only hope, go the way of cigarette advertisements on television. Feh. John McLaughlin and his pea-brained band of "Beltway Boys and Girls" are long overdue for their permanent "blankie and cookies" break.