From his column in yesterday's New York Times. Emphases mine:

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

ETA 11:33 am: Something about this column wasn't sitting right with me even when I decided to quote from it, and it's just now hit me: if I were a minority member within McCain's hierarchy, I would resent the implication here that it'd be more up to me to raise objections. As a person of color myself, one of the things that annoys me the most is when I get put in the position (however unintentionally and well-meaningly) of representing all other Asian Americans both by what I say and what I don't say -- e.g., "Peg didn't seem to have a problem with it, therefore it's cool." Well, no. Sometimes Peg doesn't speak up on uncool stuff because she's weary or preoccupied or afraid, or because at that moment it's more important to me to display good manners (and/or push a project towards its finish line, and/or keep that person focused on the event at hand) than to put someone on the defensive and send whatever we're working on off the rails. Some things don't happen to push my buttons but will send other Asian Americans through the roof, and vice versa. (I was telling a friend a couple weeks ago that it was fortunate that I read FAKE out of order, because practically the first thing Dee does to Randy is ask him if he's Japanese and then insist on calling Randy by his Japanese name, and I probably would have stopped reading right there. But I happened to read volumes 2, 4 and 7 before obtaining volume 1, and by then, I was totally hooked. And yeah, there's a lesson on getting past casual thoughtlessness somewhere in there, but I'd better save it for some other post or story.)

In the end, I'm not actually objecting to how Rich put things -- especially given that he's putting himself out there and calling McCain, Palin, and their people to account, which so needs to be done. Yeah, it's his day job, and he seems temperamentally inclined to that kind of battle, but I still find it admirable and an honor to witness. That I'm personally way beyond tired and resentful of a certain type of expectation doesn't happen to alter the fact that speaking as a person of color on matters concerning people of color is sometimes unavoidably necessary - and among one's allies as well as one's antagonists.

(It's probably good that I'm devoting the rest of my day to domestic chores, with a nap or three in the mix. I'd like to get back to (1) maintaining my semblance of perspective and (2) projecting calm and competence, and that's so much easier when my house is passably clean and I've logged in enough sleep.)