Obama cleans up spilled ice cream. Do you?

Real Time Karma has posted a link to some very moving images of Barack Obama from one of the photographers who has been following the candidate on the campaign trail, and they're the perfect antidote to my 45 minutes spent in the Jiffy Lube waiting room. I sat there half-reading an OK! magazine and half-tuning out the rattle of CNN while overhearing two dudes laughing that Obama was going to reveal his anti-American sentiments and impose the "rule of Africa" on the U.S. once he's elected. Living in the liberal, academic Massachusetts bubble without cable news, I haven't encountered this kind of talk at all, so it was a bit sobering, and I sat there expecting worse.

Ojalá Obama's elected, but does that mean that every time we pop out of our bubbles we're going to hear racist comments about him, for the foreseeable future? These two guys were easily Obama supporters, by the way, who were just joking around. The ethicist in me wonders where a line gets crossed: when do I make my disgust known, and when do I just ignore what can be chalked up to two meatheads making a tasteless comment? It's a question that we all encounter in our daily lives over a variety of transgressions, no doubt. But transgressions that concern the first African-American president strike me as in a league of their own.