Confused by Michael Steele's demand for Harry Reid to resign over what the screaming headlines called "his Negro remark"? It is puzzling, because the Republican National Committee chairman hasn't explained in specific detail what troubles him so much about Reid's comments. So far he has offered little beyond a false comparison between the silly Reid flap and the furor that ensued when Trent Lott endorsed the 1948 segregationist presidential campaign led by Strom Thurmond (in December 2002). He bemoans a "double standard" that supposedly lets Democrats like Reid get away with gaffes for which Republicans are punished.

Certainly the word "Negro" itself cannot be the problem for Steele, nor the candid discussion of President Obama's racial identity, because the RNC chairman has already given Rush Limbaugh a pass on far more offensive remarks. Back in 2008, Rush yodeled a parody tune titled "Barack the Magic Negro" on his radio show, referred to Obama as a "Halfrican-American," stereotyped him as an "angry black guy" and called him a "little black man child" who had "disowned his white half."

Nothing offensive there at all -- or not according to Steele, anyway, who made a groveling apology to Limbaugh last March after telling