Attention All Bigots! That's Right, YOU!

Frank Rich, the star columnist of the Sunday New York Times, has figured out what’s really behind the angry reaction to healthcare reform.  And get this:  it has nothing to do with healthcare reform.

Just check out the headline over his column:  "The Rage is Not About Health Care."  Then what is all the fury about, you ask?  If you said it’s about racism and sexism and homophobia, you’d be right.  What else would it be about?

Here’s how Frank Rich explains it:

“That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964. …

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.”

You see!  What comes off as raw anger is really deep-seated fear.  Critics of healthcare reform are afraid – afraid of “the conjunction” of a blacks man in the Oval Office and a woman in control of the majority party in the House and a Puerto Rican who is sitting on the bench of the highest court in the land and a gay man with clout in Congress.  And when these demonstrators chant, "Take Our Country Back!" who do you think they want to take it back from?  Frank knows who.  Anyone and everyone who isn't a white male.  In Frank’s World, you can run but you can’t ever escape the ugliness of red, white and blue conservative bigotry.

Except …

Barack Obama’s popularity was sky-high on the day he became president and only dropped after his left-of-center agenda became apparent to independents who voted for him.  They’re many of the same people who are now angry over ObamaCare.  Did they suddenly become fearful racists or is it more likely that they don’t like what they perceive as way too much government intrusion into their lives foisted on them by President Obama?  And Nancy Pelosi.

No, conservatives don’t like her, but does that mean they’re fearful of powerful women?  Actually, the love powerful women, if they’re powerful conservative women.   They embraced Sarah Palin when she was plucked from the relative obscurity of the Alaska statehouse and put on the national ticket.  And they downright loved Margaret Thatcher, who was more powerful than any man in Britain and just about any man in most of the rest of the world.  So now suddenly these conservatives have become women-haters?  I don’t think so.  I’m guessing they don’t like Pelosi because she’s a left-wing, big-government political hack.

And how about that “wise Latina” on the Supreme Court.  Conservatives are fearful of her, too?  Hey, I’m writing from Florida where Marco Rubio is running for the U.S. Senate against the current governor Charlie Crist.  Rubio is conservative and way ahead in the polls.  And oh yeah, he’s a Latino; Crist isn’t.

Are there some on the Right who don’t like blacks or women or Latinos or gays?  Sure.  In a big country, you’re bound to have some bigots.  But bigotry exists on the Left, too.  There are blacks who hate whites and blacks who hate Jews and furious feminists who hate men and unhinged liberals who despise conservatives.  But like most liberals, Frank Rich only notices when members of his team are the target of hate and venom.

Frank Rich, is a mean-spirited little man who has a bad habit of maligning conservatives in his columns with gratuitous cheap shots.  In his “The Rage Is Not About Health Care” column for instance, he brings up Karl Rove whom he describes as a “frothing” piece of work.  John Boehner isn’t simply the Republican leader in the House.  He’s the “perennially copper-faced Republican leader.”

It would be wrong to take the Frank Rich Low Road and share with you a little known fact about the Times’ nasty Sunday columnist.  I would only be taking up space in the same gutter he inhabits if I told you that when Frank Rich went to Harvard 40 years ago, he got in under an affirmative action program that set aside a few seats especially for nitwits.  So I won’t.