Trudie Goetz, owner of a high-end shop in Zurich, is my new heroine.

Ms. Goetz fought back against Opray Winfrey’s obviously trumped up charge of racism on the part of one of Ms. Goetz’s employees at Trois Pommes. Racism is an ugly charge and none of us want to be called racist. It is such an ugly charge that most of us quake. We’re so afraid that we’d rather hide than say, “That’s a damned lie.”

But Ms. Goetz didn’t roll over and play dead when one of the richest women on the planet lodged this charge against an anonymous clerk in Ms. Goetz’s store. She defended the clerk, in this instance very much siding with the person who could not call down the world media. Oh, and did I mention that there is precedent for Oprah’s crying racism when she has a new project to promote (hat tip Noah Rothman)?    

But somebody else is crying racism for personal advantage and I am wondering if there is a Trudie Goetz who will dare to call her bluff. Yes, Hillary Clinton has launched her 2016 presidential campaign by claiming that the U.S. is racist. Nice way to run, no, by running down the country?

The Wall Street Journal writes this morning in an editorial headlined “Hillary’s Racial  Politics:”

The former first lady and Senator used her first big policy speech since leaving the State Department to portray American election laws as fundamentally racist.

"In 2013, so far, more than 80 bills restricting voting rights have been introduced in 31 states," Mrs. Clinton told her political base of lawyers at the American Bar Association. She portrayed these laws as part of an effort reaching back years to "disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latino and young voters." And she threw the Supreme Court in as part of this racist conspiracy, assailing its recent decision finding the "preclearance" section of the Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional.

She claimed the High Court had "struck at the heart" of the law, though all it did was eliminate a section that had forced such states as Mississippi to meet higher legal burdens for election laws than other states with a worse current record of minority voter participation. "Now not every obstacle is related to race," Mrs. Clinton added, "but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention."

No one thinks racial discrimination has vanished from American life or the human condition. But as for minority voting, Mrs. Clinton is the one who hasn't been paying attention. …

Black turnout has risen dramatically—even in the Southern states blacks now register at higher percentages than whites. Black voter registration is the good news; the bad news is that politicians such as Mrs. Clinton obviously see this as an opportunity for demagoguery. So in the United States of 2013, with high black registration and a president of partly African descent, they run down the country as racist.

The Obama campaign had great success last year with its rhetoric about a phony “War on Women.” Get ready for a similar smear job on racial issues. We need some Trudie Goetzes in this country.