Now the whole “Journolist” e-mail archive has made its way to a blogger and is being mined for possible racism, for conspiracies to charge the right wing of racism, for Jeremiah Wright stories… It just makes me sick.

I think back to the day when candidate Obama made his speech on racism, as if that was going to set the parameters for a civil, 21st-century discussion of race in this country. Instead, I feel as if we’re taking giant steps backwards, hauled along by right-wing hysterics and cynics. I’ve been reading a lot of ’60s literature lately. I never thought I’d see attitudes from those days voiced publicly in America again, but I’m seeing them.