Joining Frank Rich today in what can only be described as a Mike Huckabee orgy currently taking place in the editorial pages of the New York Times is David Brooks, who calls Huckabee “socially conservative, but not a partisan culture warrior.” In “Blogging Heads: Politics as Unusual” (The Times’ new — and horribly stilted — video blog), we hear from Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News that Huckabee (like Obama) is “so much more human” and “the real-change” candidate. Meanwhile, one article over in the news department we learn that Huckabee has of yet in no way recanted his 1992 rhetoric that homosexuality is an “aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that poses a “dangerous public risk.”

Here’s the question: Why does The Times feel compelled to shower the same level of praise on Huckabee, a right-wing nutjob who in many respects is even more extreme than George W. Bush, as it does on Obama, who for his missteps on the gay front is clearly a candidate worthy of liberal consideration?

And here’s the answer: The Times and other “liberal” media outlets are by and large staffed with writers and editors who are straight, white and upper-class, and so can afford to meekly prevaricate behind a thin facade of ‘objectivity.’ The difference for them between Huckabee and Obama is like pancakes versus an omelet, in short, a preference or a taste that in no way will prevent them from being fed. For those of us who are not straight, white or upper-class — which is to say, those of us with something to lose (i.e., those of us who can see ourselves in Huckabee’s quarantine) — we could never write about Huckabee with anything but real fear at the prospect of such an unapologetic bigot running the country. In short, the table is again being set, and — as always– we have no expectation of being invited.

Can you not already see the ship that is our country sinking ever deeper into the frigid and deadly waters of the north Atlantic? And you dare to ask us why we have retreated from this society, when we are confronted with ersatz allies who are nothing but oblivious to this most obvious of truths?