Am I missing something?

So, as I've mentioned before Geraldine Ferraro's statements about Barack Obama were not racist but they were intensely misguided, misinformed, ignorant, offensive, and insensitive. The problem is that Ferraro is claiming that she's being called a racist and anyone who says something about Obama is being called a racist. Now I'm not naive. I know that many people are calling her racist. These are people commenting on blogs and sending her hate mail. I think that is drastically different than Barack Obama or any of his campaign or surrogates calling her racist. Ferraro, and all of us, must make this distinction (even while Ferraro herself is accusing the media of sexism). Here is Obama adviser David Axelrod's criticism of Ferraro's statement:

Leadership in campaigns comes from the very top, and the signals that have been
sent from the Clinton campaign have been very unfortunate. Not just in
this instance, where they offered a light statement of disagreement in response
to what was an offensive statement coming from Congresswoman Ferraro. But
this has been a pattern that we've seen throughout the campaign, whether it was
the Bill Shaheen incident, the Bob Johnson incident, Sen. Clinton's own
inexplicable unwillingness to make a direct statement on '60 Minutes' about Sen.
Obama's Christianity, even though they've shared prayer groups together in
Congress. All of it is part of an insidious pattern that needs to be
addressed.

Note that the statement (and previous ones) were referred to as "offensive." And rightly so. Her statements were offensive. The closest it comes to racism is having racist underpinnings that may draw (intentionally or unintentionally) the racist dixiecrats and those who perceive that they have been personally cheated by affirmative action.

The best response I have heard to this (and to any news story this year possibly) was Keith Olbermann's first ever special comment directed at a democrat on Wednesday night. It had made me sick to my stomach to hear so many democrats and republicans claim Ferraro spoke the truth but I have never felt as good as when I watched Keith Olbermann's special comment and breathed a sigh of relief that somebody else gets it.