What’s Black and White and Red All Over?

According to Lisa Shiffren in The Corner, Senator Barack Obama!

Shiffren suggests that it’s “[t]ime for some investigative journalism” into Obama’s background, because all of the mixed-race kids she knew when she was young were the product of a Communist plot to get the blacks and the Jews to intermarry. Or something like that.

I suppose Shiffren’s fear is that if his parents sung baby Barack to sleep with Pete Seeger tunes, he might be some kind of Manchurian candidate. Then again, those were the rumors about Obama’s supposed secret Muslim beliefs, too. Hmm…come to think of it, the sickle in the Soviet flag does look a little like a crescent! Maybe she’s on to something!

To be fair, not everyone at The Corner is this looney tunes. Andrew Stuttaford gently suggests that the investigation Shiffren calls for would be “thoroughly counterproductive.” Seriously, though, if this is the best idea for “oppo” that conservatives can come up with, they’re in for a severely disappointing election.

Oh, I almost forgot my favorite part of Shiffren’s post — this line: “It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution.” Good thing there’s no longer much for them to be disconcerted about now, huh?

UPDATE: Shiffren backtracks a bit.