Ah the warm sweet smell of cross burning on a glorious autumn day in the South:

When you walk into the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar in Paulding County, you feel like you’ve walked into a different era.

Behind the pool tables stands a mannequin in a Klu Klux Klan costume, but it’s what’s outside of the Patrick Lanzo’s restaurant that has some people angry.

Lanzo put up a sign that reads “Obama’s plan for health-care: N[igger] rig it.”

CBS Atlanta’s Michelle Marsh asked Lanzo why he put up the sign. “I’ve been putting up signs for 22 years and I’ve put up all kinds of political signs,” said Lanzo. “Why did you use the N word?” Marsh asked. “Well, I’ve used it most of my life. There are different ways to put your opinion up, but that’s just the words I choose,” Lanzo answered.

Despite the sign, Lanzo said he’s not a racist.

The thing about this that really galls me is that random conservatives have been falling all over themselves to mewl “See, that’s what racism is! All that other stuff doesn’t count as racism (because people weren’t using the word Nigger)!!” E.g.

This is what REAL racist opposition to Obama looks like. Notice, there is no use of “speech codes” like the word “socialism”. There is no trick photography required and not a subliminal message to be heard.

So to all you members and followers of the Raaaaacism Industrial Complex who applaud in agreement to the manufactured racism of Janeane Garofalo, Jimmy Carter, Rep. Hank Johnson and the like know this, you are helping to hide real racists like Lanzo in a sea of falsely accused racists.

Newsflash, dipshits, racists have gotten really good at hiding their racism over the last 50 or so years. If a respectable-looking white guy in a polo shirt gets out on the radio and cries out about, for example, his concern about Obama giving out reparations to African-Americans — without using the word Nigger — that doesn’t give him a free pass from being correctly labeled a racist.

Seriously, what the fuck is this country coming to?