Oops, turns out Donald Sterling is a Republican.

Note: I landed a screenwriting gig for a short film earlier this month and have been busy with that for the past three weeks. I’m on scheduled downtime right now and will vanish again in a few days until that’s done.

Poking my head up for a moment to note the inevitable threw-the-pin-not-the-grenade stage of right-wing political masturbation. I’m not talking about Cliven Bundy, but rather the right’s rush to inform the entire galaxy that LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling appears to maybe possibly kind of be a Democrat based on a couple of political donations he made in the past.

If your goal here is to smear Democrats with guilt-by-association tactics, there’s little point in trying to find out if the man is actually a Democrat or not. All you need to sling mud is mud, and the right found some. Unfortunately for them — and it really is unfortunate after they got in bed with Bundy — another racist hand grenade blew up in their face. Turns out Donald Sterling is a registered Republican.

Bundy’s racism is pretty strongly linked to his politics because he became known for the latter and then infamous for the former. That doesn’t apply to Sterling. I don’t care what his politics are and even now that we know the man is a Republican, to me that’s not terribly surprising, but it doesn’t make the entire GOP racist any more than the weak donation somehow tainted Democrats.

What informs us about the right more than anything with these two blunders isn’t that racism is still culturally engrained on the right, especially in the south and west — we knew that already — it’s the right’s overwhelming need to bring everyone else down to their level that they keep throwing the pin instead of the grenade, they are in such a rush.

They are so desperate to put down what they honestly believe is the entire-world-is-against-us lie that Republicans are racists that they are running around the battlefield with their pants around their ankles, gun empty, stepping on their own land mines.

I know a fair number of really intelligent conservatives but come on, just how fucking dumb are these people that they keep making the same mistakes over and over again?