A Racist in a Blanket is Worth Two in the Bush

The current round of identity-politics hysteria was launched about a year ago (conveniently enough for the Obama reelection campaign) with the news that an angelic black baby named Trayvon Martin had been gunned down by white racist George Zimmerman.

In the latest brouhaha, Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences, a liberal arts college outside of Cleveland Ohio, immediately shut down all classes recently to hold a frenzied, Cultural Revolution-style rally against the rising tide of racism because one student claimed to have spied a one-man Ku Klux Klan rally on campus in the wee hours of the morning. Oberlin’s ghostly KKKer is reminiscent of scores of campus hate fiasco of recent years. But who can remember anything? 

While the college administration's story of the campus Klansman has excited the national media, only two newspapers so far have bothered to call up the local cops to find out what really happened. One was the local North Coast Chronicle-Telegram of Lorain County, Ohio, which reported:

Oberlin College's “Day of Solidarity” was sparked by a student who reported seeing a person wearing what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe near the college's African Heritage House while driving through campus between 1 and 2 a.m.

College security officers responded to the area, but weren’t able to find a person wearing the infamous KKK garb.

Oberlin police Lt. Mike McCloskey said that authorities did find a pedestrian wrapped in a blanket. He said police interviewed another witness later in the day and that person also saw a female walking with a blanket.

Oddly enough, the other is the leftist Guardian U.K. of London, which noted:

Lt Mike McCloskey of Oberlin police told the Guardian on Monday that officers were still following up the KKK sighting, but suggested that the only witness may have been mistaken.
 

After the 1950s, the press slowly figured out that it shouldn't get too worked-up over things like flying-saucer sightings. But Klansman on the campus of what is perhaps the most frenetically liberal college in America?  Nobody much cares whether this horrifying hate crime went through the formality of actually taking place. This non-event has received enormous publicity ( Matt Lauer talked it up on NBC's Today Show), just like all the other campus hate hoaxes and hysterias, because so many people want it to be true.

Example of Possible Racist Suspect and Member of Hate Group

The racial atmosphere in America is starting to resemble that bizarre 1980s-1990s frenzy over Satan worshipers purportedly molesting preschoolers. We live in an era in which hate-porn movies such as Django Unchained and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo win Oscars.  There is such a hunger in 2013 to sniff out racists and punish them that the actual shortage of racists is leading people to imagine that a girl in a blanket is a lone lynch mob.

h/t Taki