Note to Ben Carson: It’s not racism or a ‘plantation’ mentality; it’s just politics

Compared to politics, separating babies conjoined at the head in a 22-hour-long surgical procedure is nothing. I wonder if Dr. Ben Carson is thinking that right about now.

Carson has had a pretty rough time lately. The pediatric neurosurgeon studied hard and worked his way out of rough circumstances to make a name for himself at the top of his field. Today that name is being pummeled, and all because he opened his mouth.

Carson knows who to blame for the metaphorical beating he’s taking, though. White liberals. “They’re the most racist people there are,” he told radio host Mark Levin on Monday. “Because they put you in a little category, a box: ‘You have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?’”

That was a quick turnaround.

Will President Obama get the respect he deserves now?

In the final days of the just-ended, very long presidential campaign, when supportive crowds booed President Obama’s mention of opponent Mitt Romney and the GOP Congress, he delivered his usual response, “Don’t boo, vote. Vote!” then added, “Voting is the best revenge.” He was he hammered for it, of course, with Romney interpreting it to mean that Obama wanted supporters to “vote for revenge.”

Actually, no. The president, by paraphrasing an old saying, was picking up on a mood of pent-up frustration felt by many who had voted for him in 2008. No one ever expected a president of the United States to govern without criticism or partisan sniping. What they hoped was that Barack Obama — a man born without wealth or privilege, whose life story exhibited the best of the American dream — would, once he worked his way to the White House, be accorded the simple respect due that special office.