Yes We Can . . . Have More Cowbell

Apparently every explanation of why Obama could possibly lose the presidential campaign must include the dark hint of racism. The most recent I've read is from Joe Klein who tries to explain why we're fascinated with Palin.

“Obviously, something beyond politics is happening here," he writes. "We don't really know Palin as a politician yet, whether she is wise or foolhardy, substantive or empty. Our fascination with her--and it is a nonpartisan phenomenon--is driven by something more primal. The Palin surge illuminates the mythic power of the Republican Party's message since the advent of Ronald Reagan.”

What is that primal "something more"? “Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized,” Klein writes--a fantasy Klein says Palin has resurrected. “He's the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter's pregnancy in many American households.” (That means he’s--shhh!--the product of a mixed-race union.)

Klein isn't the only one to raise the spectre of racism as the only possible explanation why America wouldn't go for Obama. And today I finally figured out what the incendiary argument reminds me of: You remember the Saturday Night Live sketch Christopher Walken calling for "more cowbell" on the recording of "Don't Fear the Reaper"? You can see it here. Hilarious.

Klein and company are taking this beautiful thing--the first black presidential candidacy--and they're trying to "enhance it" in the clumsiest, ugliest way, like Ferrell's cowbell "enhances" the Blue Oyster Cult classic.

Klein and company need to know how we're hearing their claims of racism. So, think of will.i.am's wonderful, soaring song, "Yes We Can." Now here's how it sounds after adding the charge that opposition to Obama is racist:

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

G-a-a-ah!