Are all “community organizers” black? Shame on Stephanopoulos for turning Palin’s comments into a racial attack! And kudos to Obama for not taking the bait.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s pretty clear they didn’t think too much of your early career as a community organizer. Governor Palin. Rudy Giuliani.
RUDY GIULIANI, AT REPUBLICAN CONVENTION: He worked as a community organizer. He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics. (boos from audience)

STEPHANOPOULOS: What were you thinking when you heard the boos, the laugher?
BARACK OBAMA: It’s a real puzzling thing. I mean, understand what I — what I did, as a community organizer. When I got out of college as a young person, 24, 25 years old, I had moved to Chicago and worked with churches, who were dealing with steel plants that had closed in their neighborhoods, to set up job training programs for the unemployed. And after school programs for youth. And to try to deal with asbestos in homes of poor people. Community service work, which John McCain has been talking about putting country first, and extolling the virtues of national service, that’s what I did between the ages of 24 and 27, before I went to law school. I would think that’s what we want all our young people to do. I would think that that’s an area where Democrats and Republicans would agree. So it’s curious to me, that they would mock that, when I, at least think that that’s exactly what young people should be doing.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re smiling about it, but some of your supporters were listening and they heard subtle racial code.
OBAMA: You know, I didn’t hear that. I just think that there is a — for folks who suddenly have tried to grab the change banner, they’ve got a very traditional view of what service means…

Pretty good response! Very post-racial of him 🙂