In an editorial entitled “Nader’s Noxious Emission” this morning, South Carolina’s Charleston Post and Courier writes in part, “Ralph Nader’s visionary leadership as a consumer advocate has saved countless lives through auto-safety improvements forced in large part by his bold activism. He also has been an effective environmentalist for decades. Yet he severely tarnished his hard-won good name on Election Night by being not just a sore loser but a racially offensive one. In the wee hours, while Americans across a wide political range reflected in positive wonder on a black person’s historic rise to the White House, Mr. Nader aimed an ethnic slur at Barack Obama. Mr. Nader said the president-elect would have to choose between being ‘Uncle Sam for the people of this country or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.’ Fox News anchor Shepard Smith rightly challenged that appalling remark. Mr. Nader responded: ‘Look, I don’t like bullies like you.’ And we don’t like seeing Mr. Nader lapse into self-consuming bitterness and self-inflicted disrepute.”

The newspaper says Nader “should take a clue” from his “generally diminishing returns” in presidential elections “and get out of politics. He also should get a clue about how thoroughly offensive his ‘Uncle Tom’ insult was and apologize.”