The People's Daily--official voice of the Chinese Communist Party--is dutifully trying to make sense of American politics for its Chinese readers. And while no one can argue that the Party is guilty of interference with internal affairs abroad, we may have a serious case of what psychologists call "transference" on our hands.

What happens when you run American politics through the state-controlled media machine in China? You wind up with a serious red pill, blue pill situation. The Washington Post reports on an op-ed explaining Barack Obama's success in the People's Daily.

"Obama won precisely because he did not emphasize his racial characteristics," the writer said. "He even made a clean break with radical black people. Therefore it can be said Obama won because of his skin color and not because of his skin color. His skin color made him different but his U.S. background made him the same.

"Obama is a graduate from a first-class university," the editorial continued. "He is a symbol of assimilation rather than a representative of different races coming together. Obama did not break the superiority complex of white people. On the contrary, his appearance strengthened the superiority complex of white people."

What a mass of layered contradictions and treacherous posturing is assembled here. There is more than enough room for a trenchant critique of the political barriers yet to be surmounted by aspiring minorities in the United States--they are real and varied--but it's fascinating to see the Party knock white bias (it is a "complex") in America while concurrently working furiously to assure readers that it still exists in its original, untainted form. The implication that Obama cannot really represent black Americans is akin to the scourge that our inner-city teachers face: you have a black student achieving high scores, on track to a tier-one school and professional career? Stop acting white! Shouldn't that student bitterly decry and opt out of the established systems of power, which, after all, are dominated by whites?

But, of course, that is the whole point with Barack Obama. He's not acting white, nor is he rejecting whites. He's comfortably black. Let's move on please. And Americans like that.