A children’s treasury of things that happen when Mitt Romney talks to black people.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney addressed the NAACP, which, legally speaking, was his prerogative, as they could not officially invite  only Barack Obama and his administration without extending the same forced courtesy to the administration’s opponent. Romney, for his part, both got booed and got a standing ovation, either of which events are reported individually based on the media outlet currently airing the story. CNN called the reception “very negative.” Fox News called the reception “groundbreaking.” MSNBC was too busy masturbating to those new Spanish-language food stamp ads to pay attention.

Thankfully, each of the major 24-hour news networks had on an Expert on African American Voting Patterns to parse out the speech and decide where, inevitably, Mitt Romney, the son of a man who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., exposed his latent, yet ravaging, racism. Luckily, there were a number of varying theories, all of essentially the same degree of derp, which is impressive given the variety of actual responses.

• Nancy Pelosi, always reliable for a reasoned and measured analysis of her ideological opponents, insisted that Mit Romney made a calculated move in getting booed by the NAACP so as to ensure the white racists in his voter base that he was, indeed, disliked by minorities, less they be convinced otherwise. Because, obviously, people who like free healthcare also hate black people, or something. Also, healthcare, despite being roundly hated by over half the population will be a boon to Democrats in November. Or something.

• The Congressional Black Caucus insisted that Romney could not have been raised by his father because Romney supports voter identification, which are totally like poll taxes except that they aren’t anything like poll taxes.

• Former head of the NAACP, Julian Bond, insisted, like Nancy Pelosi, that Mitt Romney only addressed the NAACP because he needed to prove to the rest of his racist party that he “stood up to the Negroes” and knew full well that he’d be booed, though the standing ovation thing (and the cheers for Romney’s support of traditional marriage) seem to remain unexplained occurrences attributable only to utter confusion.

• On the Ed Schultz show, though no tears were shed over the insensitivity Romney showed by merely agreeing to show up to address a room full of voters who should be so reliably Democratic they would resist any consideration of opposing viewpoints, an NAACP official did insist that Mitt Romney flew in a bunch of black Republicans to rig the crowd to support him, even though the crowd was rather large and also, I totally thought the point was that the crowd wasn’t supportive because that’s what would earn him the coveted Ku Klux Klan endorsement.

• Lawrence O’Donnell further confused the issue by saying that Romney specifically engaged the NAACP in order to get booed. Which begs the question as to whether Romney flew in extra black people to boo him? And if that’s the case, does that really mean that without the extra help, they might have cheered him? O’Donnell went on to get the testimony of a radio show host who claimed Romney flew 20 people in to cheer him, which must have been hard to hear over the boos that he was so desperately looking for.

• THIS IS REALLY CONFUSING.

• Take it home, Al Sharpton.

So, to recap: Mitt Romney wanted to get booed by the NAACP so that he could prove himself to a bunch of racists, so he flew in his own black people to show their support by heckling him, which both proved that he was both loved and unloved by African Americans and yet, somehow, this was designed to prove that he hates minorities.

Because, obviously.

I guess my exit question is just this: are racists really hard to please? We seem to be getting very conflicting messages – first, racists are the only people who will vote for Mitt Romney, because obviously if you vote for Mitt Romney you’re a racist, but also racist voters need proof that you are also racist in order to vote for you, despite the fact that everyone who disagrees with you calls you a racist? These racists seem like a lot of trouble, especially when you have to go through the process of flying in your own crowd to hate on you. Either that, or this whole thing is bullsh*t. But that can’t be.