“Such has been the narrative of his presidency: being treated like the janitor in chief — mopping up messes made by others and being chastised for leaving streaks.”

—New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, discussing the public’s impatience with President Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill.

Blow’s revolting comment, buried toward the end of an article calling for President Obama to display more emotion [Translation: “Act!”] over the Gulf catastrophe, is nothing short of despicable, but perhaps we should be grateful for it nonetheless.  Now we know the drill: no matter what the issue, no matter what the provocation, biased, race-baiting commentators like Blow will judge any criticism of President Obama to be motivated by bigotry, and refuse to accord his critics the respect they expect to be given themselves.

“Janitor in chief,” written by an openly pro-Obama-come-rain-or-come-shine African-American columnist like Blow, is offensive, unfair and dishonest. He knows better. If he doesn’t know better, he is too ignorant to be writing for the Weekly Reader, much less the New York Times.

When the next five presidents after Obama are trying to deal with the monstrous debt created by Obama’s policies, I very much doubt that anyone will refer to them as “janitors in chief.” When George Bush had to re-direct the priorities and direction of his entire administration in the wake of terrorist attacks inspired by the foreign policies of his predecessors and made possible by the broken intelligence apparatus left by President Clinton, nobody thought to call him a “janitor in chief.” Every president after George Washington has been largely occupied with addressing the consequences of the policies, errors, and miscalculations of others; Obama is only different in that he has whined about it more. It has not been his most attractive feature.

They are called the duties, responsibilities and accountability of being President of the United States, Mr. Blow, and Barack Obama asked for them, sought them, and accepted them. The level of criticism he has been subjected to for what you call “streaks”—a giant wave of oil threatening the Gulf Coast and beyond, a series of near-terrorist attacks by individuals allowed to slip through our security systems, an incompetent and untrustworthy Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security, an uncertain economic recovery, and more—is proportionate to the facts and events, and certainly not excessive by the standards of the past.

Attempts to discredit and inhibit the President’s critics by using race-baiting codes like “janitor” and attributing anything but full-throated support of Obama to racism is pure cultural poison, and the only way to combat it is to condemn those, like Blow, who keep trying to foul political discourse with it.