Come, my friend Abigail, and let us Have a Dialog on Race.

I shall invite 1,500 watchers, then 66 besides yourself to sit upon a panel. All, of course, will agree with me in most minute detail.

Even you and I, we know, agree on Fundamentals. But we have one difference, as you shall presently see.

I will invite the Media. I will perch upon a chair at Center Stage. From this throne I will sometimes ask questions of My Panel. Watchers may stand (after Careful Prescreening of Their Statements) to express their Sorrows for the Sad State of Racial Relationships in America Today.

And I will Bow My Head when one Young Man declares in Quavering Voice and Traditional Style of Socialist Self-Criticism, that he -- yea, even he, a Brother of the Universitarian Blood -- is a Racist. He fears the crowd of Poorly Dressed Blacks he may Encounter in the City Streets.

The Shame of Racist America! The Hate! The Hate is Everywhere!

And then, my friend, when even My Media is wondering how to Report this Sham as Dialog or as News, I shall Turn to You and ask a Single Question:

"Abigail, do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative action program that produced Colin Powell?"

And My Media shall breathe a Sigh of Relief. Debate! At last! The Hard, Muscular, Intellectually Rippling Abs and Flexing Pects of True Debate.

And this tripe...this staged, soporific, sodden handkerchief of crocodile tears was what appeared on the front page this morning under the heading, "Clinton and critic debate affirmative action at forum."

This meticulously rehearsed, shamelessly maudlin, drama had its premiere (and one hopes, its final curtain call) at the University of Akron on December 3. William Jefferson Blythely Deceptive Clinton starred in yet another of his stereotypical roles.

For weeks, censorious columnists have decried racism in America while crying for a National Dialog on Race.

Even before this ludicrously lugubrious forum was staged, that cry was absurd. We have been having a national dialog on race since the late 1950s. In the 1960s, it became the legitimate concern of a troubled nation. Many of us needed to talk -- and do -- something about our racial attitudes. So we did.

States needed to do something about their prejudicial laws. And they did. And we continued until the old legal barriers, and the vast majority of cultural barriers, had fallen.

Sometime between then and today, race became, for most of us, a matter of little concern. Not because we are ignoring a problem -- but because we now quietly accept others on the basis of their conduct, not their color.

Is there still prejudice? Of course. We all have prejudices about many things. But there is a difference between pre-judgements, which can be changed, and bigotry, which persists beyond all reason.

I know of only two classes of people in this country I would call racial bigots: on one side, a few thousand skinheads and Identity religious believers; on the other a matching few thousand journalists, politicians and promoters of perpetual poverty. Both sides want special treatment accorded because of race. Both sides refuse to admit that individuals should be taken on their own merits. For both, skin color is everything.

Some young skinheads may be dangerous. I've met dozens of older Identity believers, however, and not one would force anything on anybody.

But the journalists, the Clintonistas and the leaders of the poverty industry -- now that's another matter.

These people want to force everything on everybody. And what they want to force, in this Race Game, is an outrageous contradiction. They want innocent people to feel guilty for a racism we don't possess. At the same they want their egregious, institutionalized variety of racism legislated upon us all.

Absurd.

And most absurd -- but also most frightening...is the deeper significance of that show in Akron.

Of course it was staged. Presidential events have been staged since there were presidents and stages. But there was a time when a president and his handlers would have at least felt the need to make such a charade a plausible simulacrum of dialog.

There was a time when the show would have had talented actors playing the parts of opponents. There was a time when a few challenging questions would have been allowed from the audience (pre-screened, of course, with answers scripted, but plausible, plausible).

What does it say about the Clintonistas that they openly staged, and called "dialog" an event that was intellectually 67-to-1, and emotionally 1, 567-to-1? What does it say about them, and about America, that they felt no need whatsoever to disguise that this event was a sham?

It says they are worse than mere racists and frauds. They are lazy and contemptuous ones. So confident are they of their hold on the unthinking public that they no longer fear the thinking public at all.