Fox News contributor Monica Crowley on Wednesday called the president of the United States "bigoted" for his suggestion that a name like "Barack Hussein Obama" made winning elections more challenging.

In an interview that aired on Tuesday, The View co-host Sherri Shepherd asked Obama how close his re-election would be.

"When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight," the president replied, adding that his middle name was "Hussein."

Conservative websites like Hot Air immediately accused the current White House resident of trying to "smear" presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's supporters as racist.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday said she felt the need to cover the story because "the blogs are going off on this" and asked Monica Crowley, a Fox News contributor and co-host, to respond.

"It's not fair!" Crowley said of the president's comments. "What he meant was, I'm going to have a tough time because I have this funny name -- this is the line he used in 2008 -- because of my race, because of my ethnicity, because of my name. This is a man who won in 2008 with 53 percent of the vote. It was not a tight election."

"And to suggest the American people are somehow opposing him because of his race or his name is insulting to the American people and, quite frankly, Megyn, I think, bigoted in its own right."

Liberal Fox News contributor Sally Kohn argued that it was "accurate" that some voters would judge Obama on his race.

"I don't think that pointing that out makes you bigoted, I think it makes you realistic," Kohn explained. "Over one in three Republican voters still believe he wasn't born in the United States of America. If Hillary Clinton were our president right now, I think it would be disingenuous -- bordering on naïve of us -- to suggest that one of the ways in which she's being judged would be her gender. Of course it would be."

"He was the same color back in 2008 as he is now and we still had the majority of Americans put him into office," Kelly squinted. "Has his race suddenly become a deal breaker?"

"It's not even a deal breaker, it's a factor," Kohn pointed out.

"It's one thing for you to be able to sit with us and you make that point," Crowley insisted. "It's another thing for the president of the United States to make this point on national television. He's supposed to be the president of all of the American people: black, white, any race, any gender. And he's spent so much of his time, Megyn, dividing us, whether it is on class or race or gender. So for him to inject this where it doesn't exist tells me that he is so desperate to change the subject from his record that he's made up a GOP war on women, he talking about student loans, he's doing gay marriage."

"We get it because we're women, he get's it because he's black, Elizabeth Warren gets it because she's a Native American," Kelly jabbed, referring to attacks on Warren, a Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, over reports that she may have claimed to have Native American heritage.

(h/t: Media Matters)

I think we will never have an honest discussion about race or about whether gestures -- verbal, images and physical -- imply white superiority over people of color. I just don't think it's possible because no matter how hard one might try to keep the discussion neutral, it just degenerates into a defensive, angry pile on the floor.

Megyn Kelly was just breathless and wider-eyed than ever on Monday over the mere suggestion that anyone could possibly think Arizona governor Jan Brewer's finger in the face of the President and disrespect shown to the office, much less the man, could possibly be construed by anyone as racist.

Enter David Webb, creator of Tea Party 365 and BigGovernment.com contributor, who takes a dim view of anyone calling Brewer's contrived gesturing racist. Jehmu Greene rounds out the panel for Megyn, where they hash out the issues.

Greene has a strong point when she points out that whether or not it was overt racism (she doesn't believe Brewer is racist), it had racial undertones that played out for people viewing that image. Combined with Brewer's claim that the conversation left her feeling 'intimidated', there's no question that the dog whistles were sounding loud.

David Webb is Andrew Breitbart in the body of an African-American man. He loves meanness, just like Breitbart does. It's not enough to dislike someone if you're Webb. Dislike is too kind. It must be hateful and mean, spewed with sneer and squinty eyes. I saw him give Sally Kohn a hard time last week, and today he actually managed to get the usually unflappable Jehmu Green close to livid with his repeated references to the "black mafia" and denial that there could possibly be racist overtones to the Brewer incident.

Webb leads off his argument with this question: "Did Jan Brewer's finger have the N-word written on it? That would have made it racist." He follows that up with this: "Or is this a case where the President and his acolytes need to call out the Black Mafia, which is what they are, to turn it into racism?"

I understand the need on these 24/7 networks to be outrageous in order to garner attention, but these comments were stomach-turning to me, not only for their obtuseness, but for the sheer joy he gets in trying to criminalize President Obama and other respected members of the black community like Greene. The fact that he, too, is black doesn't give him free license to spew racism on the airwaves, even if he thinks it does.

This exchange is particularly difficult, starting at about 3 minutes in.

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The inclusion of lonely liberal Sally Kohn on this week's Cashin' In on Fox News, almost made this segment watchable... almost. Kohn was ganged up on five to one by host Cheryl Casone and panel members Jim LaCamp, Jonathan Hoenig, Tracy Burnes and Wayne Rogers.

After they went down the line with all of them opining on how following Mayor Michael Bloomberg's advice and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire is just going to destroy the economy and harm the so-called "job creators", Kohn had a chance to speak and interject some common sense into the discussion.

When Kohn dared to point out that the tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy and they did nothing to create jobs in America, you could almost smell the hair burning off of the other panelists heads. Wayne Rogers jumped all over her and said she needed to "get her facts straight" and then started spouting disingenuous talking points about how the richest in America were supposedly harmed by those tax cuts because they're paying a higher percentage overall of income taxes collected in America.

As Kohn rightfully countered, that's because the rich are making obscene amounts of money and their income has gone up, but it doesn't mean they're paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes and in fact, the opposite is true and tax rates for the wealthy are at an all time low. Naturally that led to the rest of them ranting and raving about how we shouldn't be picking on the wealthy in America and continuing to lie about whether lowering taxes does anything to create jobs.

I'm surprised they even let Kohn on this show because she's one of the better regulars on Fox that actually has the facts at hand and does a good job of pushing back at the lies they like to spread there. They made sure she didn't get too much time to talk though, which is the norm for this show. Gang up on the one token liberal and filibuster them and scream over them if they heaven forbid make any good points.

The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word talked to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Jared Bernstein and the Movement Vision Lab's Sally Kohn about where things are headed on these debt ceiling negotiations.

As Bernstein pointed out, even stalling around with this game of chicken as Republicans are doing can start to have real costs and consequences for our fragile economy with the possibility of interest rates going up if the markets start to get spooked that nothing is going to be done as the deadline moves closer.

Sally Kohn I believe, really made some of the best points during the discussion where she noted that the majority of the public does want to see tax increases on the rich and asked why the Democrats are not fighting harder on those issues and what lines in the sand the Democrats should be drawing during these negotiations when the Republicans are acting like "ideological terrorists" who are willing to blow up the economy if they don't get their way on everything.

As Fran and Driftglass pointed out in their podcast this week, Kohn, who regularly appears on Fox but who isn't what you would consider one of your typical "Fox Democrats" actually wrote a very good article this week which appeared in of all places, Fox's opinion page on their web site, which you can read here -- We Don't Need to Cut Corporate Taxes, We Need to Raise Them.

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Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal.

Links for this podcast include:

Scott Simon’s “Windy City”

Romney’s "unemployment" ad problem.

FOX NEWS.Com calls for higher corporate taxes.

You can listen to the archives or make a donation to help keep these going at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/. Have a wonderful holiday weekend everyone and enjoy the podcast.