pretty good article on the original subject...
"In the real world, portraying the smart, tough, and strong-willed Susan Rice as an “easy” target would be humorous -- except for what the president was implying: If Rice’s critics were not going after her on the merits, why were they doing so?
This was the dog whistle part, and it was both heard and heeded by Obama’s supporters in the Democratic Party and the media.
“It is a shame that anytime anything goes wrong, they pick on women and minorities,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat recently installed as the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. “There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by Sen. McCain and others.”
In USA Today, the headline over a column by DeWayne Wickham proclaimed, “McCain uses Susan Rice to re-launch war on women.”
Seizing on McCain’s contention that “this administration has either been guilty of colossal incompetence or engaged in a cover-up,” South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn maintained, “These are code words.”
“This is really down in the gutter,” MSNBC’s Ed Shultz added in a show stoking the “code words” angle. Richard Wolffe, another MSNBC commentator, called it a “witch hunt” against “people of color.” When asked point-blank if McCain was driven by racial prejudice, he replied that there “is no other way to look at it.”
There is, of course, another way to look at it: Republicans believe that Susan Rice’s excellent foreign policy qualifications were undermined by her hyper-partisanship. There was even a bit of presidential sleight of hand involved in singling out Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Those two men were joined in expressing reservations by two Republican senators whose names went unmentioned by Democrats: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine."
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