No, I don’t mean the fear of Mexicans that permeates the Great Southwest. That’s been going on for years though it has reached a fever pitch of late with all the anti-immigrant hysteria, and the likes of Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan rallying the yokels with their impression of “Trouble (Right Here in Riverside City)” — “With a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Beaner…”

No, I’m talking about Towelheads, Camel Jockeys, Ay-rabs, dammit. Yesterday we were greeted with the story of an American of Iraqi and Palestinian descent who was barred from boarding a Jet Blue flight from JFK to Oakland because he was wearing a T-shrit that said, in English and Arabic, “We Will Not Be Silenced.” Oh, yes you will. According to one of the security people who stopped Reed Jarrar from flying, “Going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank in a T-shirt that says ‘I’m a robber.'”

Or going to your TSA job in a shirt that says “I’m a moron.”

And today I read of US Sen. Conrad Burns who said Americans confront a “faceless enemy” who “drive cabs in the daytime and kill at night.” As a former cab driver, I resemble those remarks (though I used to do most of my killing in the daytime and drove by night, the better to partake of prostitution and drugs) but he does have a point: There are a lot of Arabs driving cabs. In New York. Not so much Montana, though you may want to hail a cab to get the hell away from people like Burns.

This atmosphere of know-nothing racism is encouraged in no small part by our commander in chief, who just yesterday told a VFW audience in Utah that “If we give up on the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities.” Somehow those penniless unemployed Iraquis are going to fly to the US (wearing T-shirts with English-only messages touting Pepsi and Nike) and start killing us instead of each other if we don’t vote against your local Democrat (rhymes with Arafat) this fall.

Is there a hole for me to get sick in?