Big week for the Lords of Tolerance: First came the navel-gazing over whether Tiger Woods’s mistresses were too white, now this. Says MKH of the Times’s gift suggestions, “The gospel cruise is perhaps my favorite offering. Is Michael Scott now editing the New York Times?” Even the lefties at Mediaite are aghast:

NYTPicker, who was the first to note the addition thinks there’s no other word for it but racist. I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. But badly, terribly thought out, bordering on offensive, absolutely. I suspect what actually happened was somewhere in the editing process someone thought they should figure out some way to work Barack Obama (he’s done well for them before!) into the mix and then extended it to Sotomayor and voila, suddenly you have a gift guide that weirdly looks like it’s out of some magazine from the 1960’s except this might not have been kosher in the 60’s (for very different reasons). So mainly just of-puttingly weird. Mostly, I am utterly amazed it made it past the editing process and am baffled why anyone felt the need to separate these gifts from the more generalized categories into which all these items fit, to one based on skin color.

Tom Maguire calls it the Times’s answer to “Stuff White People Like” minus the parodic intent. The most curious part? Rather than subdivide the gift ideas by individual race, the thought of which likely made even the NYT squeamish, they decided to lump everyone into the category “people of color.” So, in theory, they’re recommending the gospel cruise even for Hindus and Arab Muslims. Good work, kids. Exit question: I was planning to get the boss a gift basket and maybe some family games for the Wii for Christmas, but should I scrap that now in favor of something more Asian-y? Maybe Nintendo offers games geared specifically at Asians. If not, I guess I could get her the Obama children’s book on the Times list for her kids. What could go wrong?