The 2012 campaign hits the heights of absurdity

Aug. 15, 2012: President Obama speaks at a campaign event at the Alliant Energy Amphitheater in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP)

Politics is about ups and downs. In one week, the left and the media dove into the gutter to cover for Vice President Biden’s race baiting and climbed to the heights of absurdity claiming “anger” was racist.

The left better hope the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards is on their side because Mister Fantastic is the only one who can twist and stretch as much as they are doing to that nearly forgotten word: “truth.”

Biden’s “chained” comment was bad enough – a blatant ploy to terrify African-Americans into voting. As the AP put it, Tuesday the vice president told an “audience in southern Virginia that included hundreds of black voters that Republican Mitt Romney wanted to put them "back in chains" by deregulating Wall Street.” In the aftermath watching liberals like Salon’s Joan Walsh and CNN’s Roland Martin defend Biden’s gutter politics was astonishing. Walsh, who is also an MSNBC political analyst, called the comment “colorful and quotable” and whined “white people have been ‘chained’ and ‘shackled’ too.”

Martin became obsessed with the math in the roomful of people Biden address that was reportedly about half black. Like many in the media, math is hard for Roland. Fifty percent of a room is about four times the percentage of the African-American population in the U.S. (13.1 percent according to the Census.) Biden was clearly stoking their fears.

Then came MSNBC’s own co-host of “The Cycle,” Toure. Like Walsh, the loonier he is, the more his status at NBC’s crazy sister network improves. Toure complained about Romney’s criticism of Obama and that since “he says anger twice,” it’s racist. Or, in Toure's wacky words, "niggerization."

Even for an MSNBC loose cannon, that went too far. Toure threw in a 12-second micro apology on the Friday show saying he “muddied the discussion by using the n-word.” The mud, of course, was thrown at Romney. He didn’t apologize for that.

To put this in context, this is far from the most ridiculous thing Toure has ever said. He’s like a mental patient’s Howard Beale – he’s not mad as hell, he’s crazy as hell. And thanks to MSNBC, all the world knows it. (OK, not all the world. Just the few of us that watch MSNBC.)

Toure is an honest-to-goodness, Van-Jonesian 9/11 Truther. He thinks Romney “went to the NAACP's National Convention planning to get booed,” and that people who didn’t like disco were “homophobic, and to a certain extent racist.”

So claiming “niggerization” is par for the course or you could say, a Toure de force.

I’d say that it’s all enough to make one angry – at the absurdity of the election discourse and much more. And it’s only August.