Media: Sarah Palin's "thang for chocolate" Maybe Shows That African Americans Can "come in the tea party" (get it???)

In Joe McGinniss's awful-sounding new book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, he includes this innuendo-drenched section suggesting–though never coming right out and saying–that a pre-marital Palin had sex in 1987 with then-college basketball star Glen Rice. Here's how the section reads:

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ass down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe that she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not reall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit it off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one aonther. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone."

The passage is unseemly enough, but the reaction it has produced is just rank. Consider Dave Zirin, the otherwise uber-sensitive sports commentator for The Nation:

Sarah Palin and Glen Rice: who says African Americans can't come in the tea party?

You stay progressive, Dave Zirin!

The CW's "Daily Buzz" show, meanwhile, was happy to report about Palin's "thang for chocolate":

And Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock, who is black, sarcastically lauded Palin for "playing blacktop basketball":

She makes me want to join the Tea Party. Who knows, maybe there are countless misunderstood Tea Party women of high moral character who secretly love basketball and hide their affinity on the down low?

After three years wasted loathing Palin and what I believed to be her willful ignorance, I'm now comfortable admitting I can see what Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and all other right-wing men see in the potential presidential candidate.

Thanks to Glen Rice, I can see Sarah Palin from my bedroom.

Probably my favorite aspect of this latest Palin spasm is that, once again, the authors truly think they have more evolved social views than the people they're trying to mock.

Nick Gillespie surveyed a bunch of Palin biographies back in the March 2010 issue.