New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote last week of the town hall protesters: “Instead of a multicultural tableau of beaming young idealists on screen, we see ugly scenes of mostly older and white malcontents.” Fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote of the protesters “they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.” Krugman believes the protests reflect working class whites’ “cultural and racial anxiety.”

Imagine during the Jena 6 controversy in 2006, a national columnist had written of the African-American protest “mobs” organized by Al Sharpton, “we see ugly scenes of mostly black malcontents.” Imagine that during any of the rallies in support of amnesty for illegal aliens in years past, a prominent columnist had written that at root, the “ugly scenes of Hispanic malcontents” weren’t expressing frustration with citizenship policy, but were reacting negatively to a white president.

No national columnist would have written such dribble. Not only because it wouldn’t have made any sense, but because it’s politically incorrect to ascribe racist motives to minorities. For liberals, there’s no such thing as a black or brown “malcontent,” only justified grievances.