“A conspiracy! cried the delighted lady. ‘Of all things, I do like a conspiracy! It’s so interesting.’”

So wrote Lewis Carroll in Sylvie and Bruno.

Oh, yes indeed. Everybody loves a conspiracy, and rumors were flying so fast and furiously over Justice Roberts’s fumble during the Inauguration of Barack Obama. Not only were bloggers (and conservative newscasters) wondering if “Barack was really president,” it boiled to a pitch of nefarious plotting. The theory flying fastest was that the fumble had been “planned, because Obama was not really born in the U.S. and this was a way to avoid him actually taking the oath.” (The right-wing rumor during the campaign was that he’d really been born in Kenya, and was therefore not eligible to be president. Obama was born in Hawaii. Off the mainland, but very much a state of the United States.)  

So as we know — even though he didn’t have to — President Barack Obama took the oath, again, on Wednesday. (Barack knows the power of the Internet. His election campaign was based on Internet pitches. The Internet can build and it can destroy, with horrible speed and efficiency.)

But taking the oath again was not enough. Because TV cameras weren’t invited in, a new controversy erupted. CNN’s Anderson Cooper knit his brow during his “Keeping Them Honest” segment, and promised to “get to the bottom of this.” Then he knit his brow again, indicating what a serious, high-minded journalist he is, and how suspicious was the exclusion of  TV. Why would this nice guy — who is serious and fairly high-minded, essentially align himself with lunatics who are going to question everything Barack Obama says and does over the next four years?

Of course this is all part of CNN’s shift toward the right. I predict the “honeymoon phase” of Obama’s presidency will wear off at CNN faster than it will at Fox News. 

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And I’d like to report that, even in this fever of Internet madness, subjects as benign as Michelle Obama’s clothes could be critiqued with some decency on right-wing websites. Wrong.

I don’t shock easily, but I am dismayed beyond belief at a sampling of the new “post-racial” U.S. of A, courtesy of the ordinary folk, Mr. and Mrs. Christian/Conservative/Patriotic America, invited to chime in on Michelle Obama’s Inauguration Day outfits. There were countless remarks that went beyond liking or disliking her fashion choices. The racist hate was staggering.

Conservative talking heads always make a big deal out of the “left-wing bomb throwers,” who foment irrational hate against Republicans. They fail to mention the gentle, rational souls on the right, who also clutter the web with bile.

Despite the incredibly moving film and photos of two million cheering souls in Washington, DC, we have not crossed the Rubicon of racism, just in case you’ve been swept away by the media’s insistence that this is a “new age.” Barack Obama’s election to the highest office in the land certainly indicates some change. But I fear it is not (not yet, anyway) the seismic shift in attitudes so many hope for. 

“Racism is not born in you! It happens after you’re born …” That’s the prelude to the great song from "South Pacific," “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

This careful, terrible teaching continues. Can we ever be free of it? Maybe. Author/activist Anne Lamott once uttered the most hopeful scenario for the human condition: “A hundred years from now? All new people.”