Mustangs

Rhetoric: "A Mongrel People."

Did he really say that?

“Mongrel” is one of those words so loaded with negative connotations that it doesn’t work as anything but an insult....

Which leads to this question: How insulated from America has Barack Obama been[?]

Hot Air defends him on the point, saying it was 'merely amateur' and that there are other ways of saying it that are less offensive. Indeed there are! But that doesn't change the argument -- the point is that it takes more than amateurism to miss how offensive that word is in this context. The point is not that there are less offensive ways to make the same point; it's that it would be hard to construct a more offensive way.

Hot Air, following Instapundit, suggests that he was reaching for "mutts." They are thinking of Bill Murray in Stripes.

We can push the point further, though. Imagine he had said that African-Americans were "...like the mustang: whose ancestors were of many breeds, but which arose only once they came together to run free on American soil."

It's the word that matters. The question is, to what degree does the choice of words reflect the mind? Does the difference between "mongrel" and "mustang" reflect a difference in his mind? If so, what is that difference?