In his New York Times op-ed this morning, Frank Rich pours one out for Henry Louis-Gate. And as he moves from Cambridge to the White House (for the free beer), Rich stops to huff the Brit Humes at FOX News, where everyone's calling everyone else a racist these days (oh, that Glenn Beck!). So, why all the "hysteria" from that side of the TV? Writes Rich, blame Texas.
What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for. We've been reminded repeatedly during Gatesgate that Cambridge's mayor is a black lesbian. But a more representative window into the country's transition might be that Dallas County, Tex., elected a Latina lesbian sheriff in 2004 (and re-elected her last year) and that the three serious candidates for mayor of Houston this fall include a black man and a white lesbian.Looks like somebody's been catching up with their recent issues of The Economist.
Even Texas may be tinting blue, and as goes Texas, so will all but the dwindling rural minority of the Electoral College. Last month the Census Bureau released a new analysis of the 2008 presidential election results finding that increases among minority voters accounted for virtually all the five million additional votes cast in comparison to 2004. Black women had a higher turnout rate than any other group, and young blacks turned out at a higher rate than young whites.
