Laugh of the morning: former CBS anchor Dan Rather has one of those inadvertent Freudian moments in which liberals reveal their inner viewpoints on matters racial. Like President Clinton reminding Teddy Kennedy that, a short while ago, the likes of Barack Obama “would have been getting us coffee.”

HDNet’s Dan Rather stepped on one mine after another in the racial minefield that exists when talking about the nation’s first black President as the former CBS anchor, on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, uttered the following take on the President’s ability to get health care passed and how the GOP and independents would view it.

DAN RATHER: Part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama’s leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. “Listen he just hasn’t been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.” And a version of, “Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate” this is what’s been used against him, “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

While Rather may not have been being intentionally racist one has to wonder what the reaction would be if a conservative had used similiar language on the show.

0:40 video

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As a commentary on all this, let’s have a viewing of Robert Nelson’s 1965 experimental film short Oh Dem Watermelons.