Geraldine Ferraro says Obama's benefitting from his blackness. This is, at the very least, a defensible observation. It could easily be argued that if Obama were white, he'd be virtually indistinguishable from John Edwards, another vapid liberal with too little experience to be a legitimate contender for president. Ferraro is almost certainly not a racist — except inasmuch as she believes in the "soft bigotry of low expectations," supporting affirmative action and the like out of the mistaken belief that minorities couldn't make it in America if it weren't for handouts from Uncle Sam — but now she has been caught in that noxious web of liberals' own making: the speech-stifling PC codes that ensnare so many well-meaning people.

A few examples jump to mind: Larry Summers, Clinton era Sec. of Treasury, who made the mistake of suggesting what everyone already knows: that men & women are inherently different.

And Joe Biden, who last year offered his opinion that Barack Obama was, among other things, "articulate." This compliment had many folks branding him a racist, even though — aside from his blackness — articulateness is just about the only thing Obama has to offer.

And Hillary Clinton, who stated the plain fact that Martin Luther King did not pass the Civil Rights Laws of the 1960s because he wasn't the president, and therefore couldn't have signed that legislation into law. Clinton's point was simply that great oration — again, Obama's strength — isn't enough to get laws passed & really make a difference in people's lives. But this innocent remark had lots of people smearing Hillary as a racist.

There are many, many other examples of this sort of nonsense, which has pervaded every corner of our lives. In schools and neighborhoods and workplaces around the country, people are afraid to speak their minds as openly as they might for fear of being called a racist, a sexist, a bigot, or a homophobe. For a long time, it seemed that only conservatives or non-political types ever really got hammered by the PC police, but now, with a black man vs. a white woman duking it out for the Democrat nomination for president, the liberals have at last drawn their daggers on each other.

Obama has been given a lot of credit for remaining above the fray & not sullying himself with this kind of attack. But while he may be playing the game a little smarter than everyone else, he's still playing the same game.

When Mrs. Ferraro complains that Obama's got an unfair advantage by virtue of his blackness, or Mrs. Clinton sniffs about how rough she's got it because she's a woman, they play right into Obama's hands. His above-the-fray, post-racial attitude is all pose. Any time any of his opponents mentions race, or anything that can conceivably be connoted as being related to race, he wins. And crying about being a woman doesn't help either, because all that does is remind everyone that Obama's black. "You think you've got problems? Well, I'm black!" Obama could respond, but he doesn't even need to say it.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Mississippi, Obama garnered 90% of the black vote. This is pretty consistent with how he's been doing all along, proving that even if the candidate himself was actually a post-racial guy, many of his supporters are absolutely consumed by race. Hillary and her followers are similarly consumed by gender, not that it seems it'll do them any good.

If Obama really wanted to transcend race & gender issues, he would answer his critics by absolving them of the need to play by the PC speech codes. In other words, admit that Geraldine Ferraro's words weren't the slightest bit racist, even if he thinks they were wrong. Allow that Hillary wasn't being racist when she said Dr. King didn't pass any laws, and that Bill Clinton wasn't being racist when he downplayed Obama's win in the South Carolina primary back in January.

Perhaps it would take on a snowball effect: pretty soon, when guys like Larry Summers said men & women were different, instead of shouting him down and calling him a sexist, people would actually debate the pros & cons of his point of view. Maybe when Bill Bennett says that aborting black babies is wrong, people wouldn't jump to the conclusion that he's a racist, but would instead actually think about what he said.

We could have real, adult debates here in America, rather than the childish name-calling we've had for so long.

Obama could get the ball rolling and be a real force for change. He could help mend the fences between the races, and between the genders. But does he really want to? Or is he just playing the PC game to his best advantage?