I've had my share of disagreements with some members of Black Kos, but I think they and others here have done this site a service by raising awareness of racism and white privilege. In particular, they've made me sensitive to the way white critics of the President (myself included) talk about him. What MM said was racist. He should apologize.

It's not hard to criticize the President without resorting to racially charged charges. Really, it's not. I do it all the time.

I mean: Tim Geithner, drones, the war in Afghanistan, preserving TBTF, TARP, HAMP, proudly protecting bankers from "pitchforks," drones, indefinite detention, Bahrain, Gaza, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia, Bagram, the war on whistle blowers, extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich, unfair trade, drones, summary executions, drill baby drill, tar sands, Ozone, the Grand Bargain, austerity, killing cramdown, medical marijuana, drones, William Daley, Omar Kahdr, military commissions, the "recovery summer," "savvy" businessmen...

With this wealth of material, why or why, MM, do you feel it necessary to question the authenticity of the President's blackness?

UPDATE: Quite a few dissents in the comments, people arguing that this wasn't racist, that I'm being overly PC or some such. (PC? Me? Oh, how I wish you knew me.) I think some dissenters are just reflexively defending someone they admire. But others seem to sincerely believe what he said isn't offensive.

Some of these comments argue that Michael Moore was actually getting at a truth. I agree, somewhat: he was getting at a truth but didn't get there and tripped and fell and hit his head. The truth is that a lot of liberals overestimated the President's liberalism because of his race. His race was one of the factors -- along with his opposition to the Iraq war and his brilliant marketing -- that led a lot of liberals to overlook a lot of troubling evidence. (As an aside, someone I know -- a very smart guy -- said he hopped on the Obama bandwagon when the President said his favorite character on the Wire was Omar -- a small but telling example of the ways in which the President projected liberalism to his target audience w/o actually, you know, embracing liberal policies.)

To this day, people are continually surprised by the President's conservatism in a way I suspect they wouldn't be if he were a white Southern male. White liberals believe, deep down, that he doesn't really believe in some of this shit he's doing and saying, right? I mean, he's black! (In Drew Westen's much-discussed piece, he offered six possible explanations for the President's lackluster performance; they didn't include the possibility that he is actually a committed neoliberal.)

My assessments of MM's comments probably would be less harsh if MM had been responding to the question: why are liberals disappointed with him -- if he was trying to analyze (and make fun) of liberals, including himself (ie showing awareness of his own racial biases) but that wasn't the case here.

I'd like to reiterate something I said in the comments. My motives here aren't pure -- my only purpose here isn't to call attention to racism. As someone who basically shares MM's politics and view him as an important voice, I don't like to see him fuck up, and that's what he did here, I believe.