Scripps-Howard columnist and Project 21 member Deroy Murdock has this to say about the doctored photo of Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele that appears on “The News Blog”:

This is just one more example of the Left’s bigotry towards black conservatives. Rather than engage us in serious debate, they make Michael Steele, Maryland’s democratically elected lieutenant governor, look like Black Sambo, one of the ugliest of the ugly racist stereotypes — complete with extra-darkened skin, huge red lips, and illiterate lingo (“I’s Simple Sambo and I’s running for the Big House” [U.S. Senate]). Cartoonists have depicted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a bird with fat lips and as a barefoot mom in a rocking chair on a rural porch. Radical calypso singer Harry Belafonte compared Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, to house slaves. One magazine a few years ago portrayed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas shining fellow Justice Antonin Scalia’s shoes. The same magazine published an illustration of Thomas as a lawn jockey.Largely having retired such stereotypes and images from polite company, it is nauseating that they now only survive among the American Left. Out of answers and devoid of ideas, all they can do is excavate the iconography of the Ku Klux Klan to attack honorable, black American public servants who do not drink the liberal Kool-Aid. If the American Left’s reservoir of decency were not running on fumes, they would denounce such racist rhetoric and instead, debate the issues. I am not holding my breath.

Addendum 10/27/05: An interesting follow-up story can be found here.Addendum 10/29/05: Robert George at RAGGED THOTS has plenty of coverage of this and also links to other blog coverage, as well Washington Post and Baltimore Sun reports, of the story.

Addendum 11/2/05: For the reference of those who want to see the photo of Michael Steele as doctored by blogger Steve Gilliard (and later deleted by Gilliard from his website): Michelle Malkin has posted it on her blog.