Has anyone been following the vulgar claim propagated by writer Dinesh D’Souza (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html, “How Obama Thinks”; read this and try to tell me what Forbes’ editors were thinking in publishing this, let alone putting it on the cover!) and adopted by Newt Gingrich that President Barack Obama is somehow tainted by his father’s Kenyan “anti-colonialism”? This may be the most disingenous attempt to paint Obama as anti-American yet through a veil of racial insinuation.

You can love, hate or be somewhere in the middle toward our president, but I thought the “birther” and racial taint arguments had finally subsided. But no, the D’Souza article — amazingly given the cover of Forbes (at about the same time Time was accusing Israel of not caring about peace on its own cover) — resurrects the worst of our national consciousness.

Even conservative David Frum has torn apart this blatant race-baiting. (http://www.frumforum.com/gingrich-obama-wants-whiteys-money, “Obama Wants Whitey’s Money.”)

What’s most astounding in this exercise is that D’Souza hails from Mumbai, India — the largest country in the world that has benefitted from de-colonization in the past century! And yet he uses his personal background to support his contentions about Obama.  I suppose he (and Gingrich, for that matter) believe that Mahatma Gandhi was also a disingenuous “Manchurian Candidate” type, less interested in India’s peaceful disengagement and more in creating a “New World Order” in which, presumably, communists, socialists, Siths, Orcs, and perhaps even Lord Voldemort prevail?

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with political criticism on the merits. But for people with a specific agenda to infer that there is some ulterior programming hidden within our President waiting to go off like a ticking time bomb, and to associate it with some imagined African tribal assault on our culture and society? That transcends even racism — it is heinous, ugly and, quite frankly, grossly insulting to all Americans, of whatever political or racial stripe.

My recommendation for D’Souza, and by his confirmation of D’Souza’s views, Gingrich: Don’t  confuse your intellectual capabilites for either intelligence or credibility. Both of you are seriously lacking in your respect for our President, our culture and our nation.