I agree with the MSNBC pundits and the bloggers in this space who contend that this years politics are drenched in race. But they got it exactly backwards. It’s only their heads that are filled with the supreme importance of race, they’re the ones who see racial overtones everywhere. It’s downright comical to see how they conjure up images of bigotry where nobody in their right mind could have imagined they existed. Dog whistles are everywhere! For example, a Republican was excoriated by Prof. Charles Ogletree for referring to Obama as a professor. That was code for “uppity”, you know. Another are made a lighthearted comment about Obama’s love of golf. According to Lawrence O’Brien “Obama equals Tiger Woods equals Racism”. Don’t feel bad if you don’t get it. Whole patches of the language are now fenced off by the language police. References to the Constitution? Racist. “Chicago?”. “Angry?”. Even “kitchen cabinet”. Yep, all racist. And heaven forbid anybody should mention “Food stamps” or “welfare”. That would be beyond the pale. The truth is that most Americans and especially the libertarian/fiscal conservatives I know simply don’t care that much about race any more. They happily read Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, vote for Vernon Parker or Steve Montenegro or anybody else, regardless of their race, who represents their values. Of course, if they have sincerely held beliefs that Pres. Obama is misguided in his relentless pushing of welfare programs (which they do), the self-appointed racism monitors allow them no acceptable way of expressing that opinion. Or maybe that was the whole point of the program. Dog whistles by definition are audible only to those attuned to their frequency. If your world is full of racial dog whistles, maybe it’s you.