Uppity

There are many who think that the constant references to Barack Obama as an elitist, a celebrity, arrogant, as somebody outside the mainstream, the other, references that 'he's not one of us,'and various references to Obama thinking of himself as Godlike (huh?) are just code words the Republicans were using against him because they just wanted to call him uppity, but didn't want to actually say uppity due to the racial connotations of the word. Well, good news everybody, they decided to throw that right out the window. Uppity is on the table!

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Good that they aren't trying to shade it. Nice also to see that Westmoreland , the guy who couldn't remember the 10 commandments on the Colbert Report, also refused to back down when given an out. He's back out there today, claiming innocence, saying “I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem —- snobbish.’ That’s what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up.”

Sure you did Lynn, I bet you also just always happened to say it about a black person in the company of only white people. But good luck trying to back yourself out of this. It's not exactly what I predicted back in June, no "N-bomb", and it was out in the open, not a closed door fundraiser. But there we are, the first incursion of overtly racial language in the 2008 presidential campaign from a GOP House backbencher in early September. I am the racial internet genius. God, this is going to be a classy campaign season.