It's always a pleasure to read the NY Times' Frank Rich. His focus today is on the "conversation on race" that the Gates episode and subsequent "beer summit" was supposed to engender. What is really going on, as Rich explains, is that it's exposing "racial and nativist panic", especially among the tony Tories (eg., Wee Willie Kristol, the blue bloods at National Review, the Fux Nutwork gassers, etc.-- in other words, the Rethuglican establishment), who are fond of stoking fears using white working-class "surrogates" (pawns) like "Joe" (not his real name) "the Plumber" (not his profession) and the New Haven firefighters, with whom they have nothing in common, to advance their reactionary worldview.
