After Karl’s epic destruction of Bill Moyers’ whitelibwash of the Reverend Wright, I hesitate to bring this up, but here’s Joe Conason in Salon:

There is nothing remarkable in the sudden reappearance of right-wing con man Floyd Brown, whose latest venture is an inflammatory television ad now airing in North Carolina that attempts to blame Barack Obama for gang murders in Chicago (and international terrorism, too). Nobody familiar with Brown would expect him to resist smearing an African-American presidential contender.

He has given conservatism a rank smell for two decades — and if there is a racist odor to the coming general election campaign, it is likely to emanate from his vicinity. True to form, according to Time magazine’s Michael Scherer, Brown has promised to follow his hit on Obama with an ad designed to inflame animosity toward illegal immigrants.

What is remarkable about Brown is that no matter how much America changes, he does not. He not only survives but thrives, cycle after cycle, playing the same ugly game that first won him notoriety in 1988, back when he scripted and televised the flagrantly inflammatory Willie Horton ad. He lurks on the fringe of presidential politics because the Republicans tolerate and sometimes secretly encourage him, so long as they can claim that they have no connection with his schemes. Those denials have always been implausible — and as he ramps up for a new season of divisive attacks, the question is whether the mainstream media will give Brown the kind of scrutiny he deserves.

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As Brown goes about his dirty business this year, yet another Republican presidential candidate can be expected to repudiate him, at least for the record. But if John McCain sincerely wishes to elevate the tone of the general election and reject the politics of division, he will have to do more than issue ritual denunciations. McCain must tell the Republican faithful, including the high-rolling donors who may finance Brown’s advertising, that he is a pariah — and that anyone who underwrites that kind of campaign will be unwelcome in a McCain White House.

I mean, how far are these guys willing to reach to try and get the focus off of Obama’s questionable affiliations? Just to refresh their memories, there just might be skeletons in their closets that deserve a little bit of airing, such as this:

The NAACP Tied With Sheila Jackson Lee On the eve of the 2000 election, the NAACP ran an ad in which the daughter of James Byrd said that Bush’s refusal to sign hate crime legislation while he was governor of Texas, was like watching her father die “all over again.” The ad featured a horrifying image of a truck with a chain dangling behind it. The not so subtle message: Bush is indifferent to race-based crime. For obvious reasons, the ad did not mention that Byrd’s attackers were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Sheila Jackson Lee October 2003: On mandating diversity in college sports (70% of athletes must be white) Insiders said Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of the Congressional Black Caucus called it “a move back to pre-Civil War days racism. This is outrageous and reprehensible. Black athletes are much better in football and basketball, and if we give preferential treatment to whites, it will deny African-Americans their constitutional right to play those sports.”Kelvin Sampson, coach of college basketball power the University of Oklahoma, with one white and 11 black players, is reported to have exclaimed, “You gotta be kidding! You mean I’d have to put, what, 70% white players out there? Guys who can’t jump over a phone book, and run like they’re wearing cement shoes? That’s just (bleep). You put guys on the team because of ability, not to fill some bonehead quota!”

Is this really somewhere Conason wants to go, or is this supposed to be a private show? I decry any such ad, but the bigger news is that McCain wants to lecture the Republican party for running an ad speaking the truth about The Candidate’s strange affiliations. I don’t recall Conason deploring that. Perhaps your Google-fu will prove me wrong, though.

It’s telling that such a thing’s always a “Willie Horton hit” and not a whoever-those-fuckfaces-who-killed-James-Byrd-were hit.