Know your enemy, part 17

"There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos." (Jim Hightower)

And oncoming traffic which has veered from the right-hand lane and is bearing down on you, as you politely wave it past. Which is a metaphoric attempt to explain what happens when the Obama administration pays attention to the Rightzis.

We're being encouraged to honor To Kill A Mockingbird, with its message of tolerance and brotherhood in 1950s Alabama, but it seems to me the life of Shirley Sherrod would make a better story. After the murder of her father in 1965, for which no one was ever charged, she chose to stay in Georgia and work for change, marrying an official of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While trying to help black farmers, she was approached by the Spooners, a white couple facing the loss of their farm. After much hesitation, she agreed to accompany them to the bank, and foreclosure was avoided. Years passed, history rolled on, and Mrs. Sherrod found herself working in the Department of Agriculture during the nation's first black presidency. Then a vicious reactionary got hold of a video of a speech she made to the NAACP, talking about the Spooners and how her experience led her to abandon her hatred of white people. He edited the video to make her sound like a racist and posted it on his blog, and soon it was being gleefully promoted by more vicious reactionaries on a "news" network. Before she could defend herself, Shirley Sherrod was ordered to resign, by no less than the Secretary of Agriculture, with the backing of the White House.

Anyone who has watched a Hollywood biopic knows what comes next: The complete video is finally aired, the Spooners, now old and frail, tell their story, and everyone but Mrs. Sherrod is revealed to be a coward, a liar, an idiot, or a previously undreamt-of combination of the three. She is offered another, better job at Agriculture. Will she take it? Will she be played by Alfre Woodard or Angela Bassett? Stay tuned.

More important, will the Obama people finally learn to ignore the Rightzis? Compromise, appeasement, and gathering for a few beers and a chorus of "Kumbaya" have not worked and never will. The Rightzis have nothing to contribute but paranoid fantasies. If Obama takes them seriously, he will eventually come to believe that he is a Nairobi-born Muslim who admires Adolf Hitler (yet hates white people) and is preparing to turn the country over to Ban Ki-moon and his army of flying monkeys. Also death panels.

Steps must be taken:

1. Instruct the White House switchboard (or whatever it's called in digitalese) to put Republicans on hold with accordion music. No, they'll like that. Play Yoko Ono until they hang up.

2. Have a haz-mat team check the building for hidden copies of The American Spectator, National Review, Washington Times and all Regnery publications.

3. Equip all televisions with an F chip to block Fox stations. An exception can be made for FX because it carries Louie, the only damn sitcom worth watching. (When Dick Cheney checks into a hotel or hospital suite, he demands that only Fox News be playing, so this isn't as childish as it sounds.)

4. No reading of blogs from the right bank of Blogenheim. Not even for laughs.

5. Have Robert Gibbs respond to all slanted questions by yelling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"

6. Send Capitol police into Teabigot rallies to check ID. If they don't have any, throw them in jail on the grounds that they are "undocumented." Even if they have some, it could be fake. Don't take a chance.

This is war.