Hey, Do You Know Bob Herbert?

Good Lord, these conspiracy loons are coming unglued. It's not enough we have New York Times affirmative action columnist Bob Herbert hallucinating on national television, now we have Gannett dunce DeWayne Wickham resuscitating the feared Obama as Muslim rumor, even though I can't think of a single Republican who's been out there saying this.

Wickham wastes little time getting at it.

A new right-wing conspiracy has surfaced in this presidential campaign. It's the not-so-subtle effort to replace the N-word with the M-word.

The N-word is an epithet that racists have used for centuries to demean black people.

The M-word, for Muslim, is a post-9/11 slur that bigots use to brand someone as a follower of Islam -- which, in their twisted minds, is equivalent to being unpatriotic or even anti-American.

Huh?

Don't followers of Islam identify themselves as Muslims?

Am I missing something here?

So after 9/11, when Muslims murdered 3000 Americans, what were we supposed to call Muslims?

This Wickham does not clarify.

As the nation's tolerance for overt displays of racism waned, race-baiting politicians and their supporters used euphemistic talk to generate the same reaction.

That's what happened during the 1988 presidential campaign when Republicans used against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the case of Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who tortured and raped a woman after being furloughed from a Masschusetts prison.

OK, it's been 20 years now, and we'd hoped people would come to grips with it, but can we, uh, MoveOn from that already people?

The following year, Rudolph Giuliani did a similar verbal dance as a New York City mayoral candidate when he called David Dinkins, his black opponent, a "Jesse Jackson Democrat."

So you can't call a Democrat in the mold of Jesse Jackson a Jesse Jackson Democrat?

(As it so happens, Giuliani was wrong. Jackson couldn't have been any worse than Dinkins.)

We're losing the language, folks. Can someone please point me to the list of appropriate words we can use to identify people?

Tagging Obama with the M-word is a stealth campaign meant to link him to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist legion.

C'mon. Is there anyone sane who can link Obama with bin Laden?

Dude.

And in a true sign a hackneyed, walking cliche like DeWayne Wickham is bereft of original ideas, he then segues into another tired slander of Rush Limbaugh.

Please, can we at least be mildly original and attack Sean Hannity?

Rush Limbaugh is one of the few public faces of this deception. The right-wing radio talk show host has repeatedly called the Illinois senator "Barack H-u-s-s-e-i-n Obama." The special emphasis he gives Obama's middle name is a surrogate for the M-word.

These paranoid media types really need to get out in the real world and talk to people. I do not see or hear Republicans talking about these wild conspiracies and whispering code words in hushed tones.

The left appears to be on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. They're so sure some nefarious ad man from the McCain camp is going to unleash a fusillade of "negative" ads (that won't be coming), they've already shot their load freaking out over a couple of satirical ads.

Now you have a national columnist rehashing long ago discredited smears against the right that makes him look like an idiot.

Memo to Wickham, Herbert et al.: Take a good look at your own party before you start predicting what the GOP is going to do.

You can all meet in therapy.