If you’re jonesing for further proof that Kamala Harris makes for a touchy conversation topic—and heading into Thanksgiving, why wouldn’t you be?—look no further than the fifth paragraph of Mark Z. Barabak’s Nov. 12 column in the Los Angeles Times, the one titled Kamala Harris, the Incredible Disappearing Vice President. Barabak, a mustachioed, sleeve-tattooed Deadhead from NorCal, has covered politics for nearly half a century, with over a decade’s worth of knowledge about Harris dating back to her district attorney days in the Bay. That kind of gravitas usually unburdens a reporter from giving a rip about blowback from internet scolds, especially ones on the left who waste their days tweeting at reporters to “Do Better.” And yet, here was the venerable Barabak in his column, inoculating himself against any suggestion that he was evaluating Harris differently because she’s a woman and a person of color. Harris has shed much of her star power since becoming Joe Biden’s vice president, he wrote, because “it remains a fact that the No. 2 job in the White House is inherently a diminishing one.” And then: “It’s neither racist nor misogynistic to point that out when the jobholder happens to be Harris.”