As she put it on Chris Matthews' "Hardball": "One word, Chris -- one word. 'Confederacy.' I mean, you know, the South is very -- I live there, OK? I want to make that clear, too, because I'm not bashing Southerners."
No, she was certainly not bashing Southerners. This she made clear in her Washington Post column calling for the Republican Party to "drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie."
How one gets from "we don't want socialized medicine" to "we hate black people" was a tough equation. As my algebra teacher used to say: "Please show your work."
Parker's explanation: "Sarah Palin may not have realized what she was doing, but Southerners weaned on Harper Lee heard the dog whistle." And on "Hardball," she said: "You don't position a white woman and a black male and pretend like there's nothing happening there. There's a deep history. That's why I mentioned Harper Lee in there."
So as I understand it, by nominating a black man for president, the Democrats had checkmated Republicans, who should have done the decent thing by not nominating a white woman for vice president, which would be seen as a deliberate ploy to lure gallant Klansmen into defending the white woman's honor by voting against Obama!
Called upon to draw a straight line between Sarah Palin and racism, I guess this is as good a try as any.
Any crackpot can put forward lunatic theories. What gives Parker's slanderous claim punch is her repeated assertion that she's a Southerner, so she's giving us the inside dope. To make sure no one misses the point, Parker issues repeated professions -- "that's what we do in the South," "I am down there," and "I live there, OK?"
Despite the implication that this Daughter of the Confederacy was virtually homecoming queen at Ole Miss, Parker was born and raised in Winter Haven, Fla. She married a South Carolinian and now splits her time between South Carolina and Washington, D.C.
I'm no Civil War buff, but I'm fairly certain there were no brave Confederate stands at Winter Haven against a superior Northern force -- unless those Northern forces were successful dentists from Larchmont. I would lay money that there aren't a lot of antebellum mansions on magnolia-lined boulevards dotted with statutes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Winter Haven, Fla.
Except for the coasts, Florida never had much of a culture below the northern tier on account of the fact that the area beneath the panhandle consisted primarily of malarial swamps. Northerners got that deep into Florida at the turn of the last century -- i.e., about same time as northern Floridians did.
If Parker is a Southerner because she grew up in Winter Haven, then I should be the next spokesman for Gorton's of Gloucester because I grew up in Fairfield County, Conn. I'll pose in rain gear at the wheel of my ship, dispensing flinty, down-home Yankee wisdom -- "Ya cand get theh from heah" -- just like most natives of New Canaan, Conn.
Oh, and one more thing. I was once employed by MSNBC. Speaking as an MSNBC insider, I regret to inform you: We MSNBC-ers hate the military, loathe cops, despise the South and absolutely detest Christians. No really, take it from me -- I'm an old MSNBC hand.