So the leech whose salary as Attorney General of the United States we pay, who is, in effect, our employee — even our servant, if you swallow Leviathan’s claptrap about public service — reviled us as "a nation of cowards" last week. Try calling your boss a yellow belly and see what that does for the old working relationship. Yet Public Servant Eric Holder not only delivered this insult in his "Remarks" for the "Department of Justice [DOJ] African American History Month Program," he expects our deferential agreement.

And what makes us cowards? Have we defended the torture of helpless prisoners, as has Holder’s DOJ? Or the armed kidnapping of a terrified, 6-year-old refugee fleeing Castro’s hell? Have we preyed on folks who prefer reefer to rum, ginning up crises and calling for longer terms of imprisonment to curry favor with voters? Have we kicked the down and dying Second Amendment in the hopes of advancing our career with the Democratic Party? No. We’re jellyfish because we don’t share Holder’s obsession with skin-color.

And yet the hypocrite alleging our racism lives in a glass house. "We still speak too much of u2018them’," Holder confesses, "and not u2018us.’" Actually, regardless of how politicians like the AG "speak" about their fellowmen, the rest of us likely don’t much notice the Creator’s rainbow of hues, except as a descriptive: when asking the rector about a parishioner I don’t know, I might say, "The elderly black lady who sits in the first few pews and always wears a red hat." Holder can laze about the office we buy him and "speak of u2018them’"; the rest of us are too busy working and paying taxes for such tawdriness.

Holder’s "Remarks" are a vacuous yet horrifying blend of platitudes, pap, megalomania, and threats. Here’s a federal official lusting not only to know our thoughts and emotions but to compel their conformity with his: "Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must — and will — lead the nation to the u2018new birth of freedom’ so long ago promised by our greatest President. [Yo, Barack: I smell disloyalty in the ranks.] This is our duty and our solemn obligation." Funny: the DOJ’s "Mission Statement" is about as unconstitutional as they come, but even it doesn’t mention any such "duty."

Despite their inanity, Holder cleverly phrases his "Remarks." He appears to accuse all ethnicities of refusing to "talk enough with each other about race": his is an equal-opportunity condemnation. But he knows that we know who’s really at fault for this "truly sad" and "continuing problem."

Ironically, as Holder bloviated about the DOJ’s "duty and…solemn obligation" to force his fetish on the rest of us, one of New York City’s biggest buffoons seemed determined to spoof the whole topic. Al Sharpton pitched yet another fit, this time over a political cartoon in the New York Post: two cops stand over a "violent" chimpanzee they shot and killed in Connecticut after it mauled a woman; one cop tells the other, "They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

Al spies a reference here to Barack Obama. Hmmm. Either Al’s illiterate or he has an unhealthy fixation with the charlatan in the White House. How else to account for reading the president into this caption since Congress writes legislation and the bill in question originated with the last Administration? (Come to think of it, the previous Thief-in-Chief did bear a striking simian resemblance…) But Al’s made a career of ignoring picayune things like facts. Clearly, this cartoon calls Obama a monkey — “troubling at best," Al roared, "given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.” He manufactured enough dudgeon to hurl himself and 200 protestors at the Post’s offices.

Alas, the besieged Post apologized. But Al doesn’t want apologies. He wants power. Like many "civil rights activists," he’s a failed candidate who can’t satisfy his lust to boss us at the ballot box. Ergo, he rabble-rouses, which lets him boss his foolish followers and the companies they bully instead. He denounced the Post’s mea culpa with all the bluster and intimidation we’ve come to expect from such churls: "The New York Post statement will be discussed by all of the leadership of the various groups that have mobilized and we will respond to it at the rally at 5 p.m. [Friday] outside of the New York Post. … we will make a collective decision on how to proceed. … Let us remember that Mr. [Rupert] Murdoch [the Post’s publisher] got a waiver from the FCC so he could own two radio, two television stations and a newspaper in this town. We will ask the FCC to review that waiver." Hard to believe a goon this heavy-handed hasn’t managed to win even one of his five political campaigns.

Demagogues as fraudulent and malicious as Al immediately jumped on his band-wagon. "To compare the nation’s first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel," huffed Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. Barb is doubtless an expert on racist drivel, as the white, Hispanic, and Asian journalists unwelcome in her organization could testify.

No racial hustling is complete without Spike Lee. "This is not the end,” he growled at Friday’s demonstration. “It’s not just black folks. It’s an insult to everybody.” Oh, come on, Spike. The only insult is coming from you et Al, and it’s aimed at our intelligence. Obama has a great many crimes to his credit, but get over it: he didn’t write the bail-out bill. So the cartoon’s chimp refers to the Congressional cretins who did, OK?

Nor could the governor of New York resist adding his two cents, even if they jangled incoherently. “They [sic — presumably the Post?] do feed a kind off a negative and stereotypical way that people think," David Patterson babbled, "but I think if it’s enough that people are raising this issue, I hope they would clarify it. In a situation like this where an economic downturn has shown in the past that it does lead to a lot of unnecessary and stereotypical characterizations, an explanation is in order.” You betcha; in fact, maybe someone could explain Dave’s meaning. Then the governor revealed what’s driving him and no doubt many of the Post’s other enemies: “I’m trying to be fair to the New York Post, who [sic] has never been very fair to me."

The Post understands the game being played: it noted in its apology that "there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past — and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback." Al can thank the fierce competition over subscribers in a town with multiple daily newspapers for the extensive and sympathetic ink he’s garnering. While he uses his followers as pawns in his struggle for power, Murdoch’s competitors use him.

Meanwhile, if the cartoon offends anyone, it oughta be the chimps. What slander, to compare even the most violent primate on his worst day with the thugs and warmongers in Congress. Where’s PETA when you need them?

The Best of Becky Akers