Absolutely hysterical! Every time Bob Johnson opens his mouth, something unbelievable comes out. This time it is two things.

One, an abject beg for more “support” — ie cold hard cash — for his struggling Bobcats from the Charlotte business community. Guess what Bob? Not gonna happen. Not at these price points, not with the product you put on the floor. You are gonna to lose money, at least $10 million a year, for the foreseeable future.

But Johnson did accomplish one thing: Set the stage for going to the city of Charlotte for additional public subsidy. He’s run the distress signal up the flagpole, above the fold A1 of the Uptown paper of record. Everyone knows what comes next.

Meanwhile, Johnson has once again wounded his presidential candidate, HRC, by slamming Barack Obama. Johnson told Jim Morrill that fired Clinton campaign figure Geraldine Ferraro was right — Obama would not be where he is were he white.

This overlooks the not small fact that this is true of Bob Johnson as well. Starting with the $500,000 backing he got from cable mogul John Malone to start BET, to his selection by David Stern to be the NBA’s first black owner, to his various black-targeted business ventures, Johnson is all about trading on his race.

Great, super. America gives us the considerable freedom to sell what you got. And Bob Johnson has being black down cold. What he needs to work on is having enough class and decency not to knock another guy for doing the same thing.

Bonus Observation: Incidentally, let’s not forget that a proper white Barack Obama would have to be — by all accounts and quite apart from his politics — intellectually brilliant. Just being “a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ ” as Johnson put it, does not begin to capture a bizarro world Obama.

Update: Here’s Uptown paper of record NBA beat writer Rick Bonnell adding some vital details on what was evidently Johnson’s totally unexpected carpet bombing of the local business community:

Wow. This isn’t biting the hand that feeds you. This is gnawing on the fingers.

I wasn’t at Johnson’s appearance in the newsroom. I’d been told he wouldn’t address basketball issues, so I thought my presence might be counter-productive. But had I been there, I would have asked the following question:

You know any other business in Charlotte that got a $265 million home office from the taxpayers?

I’m not saying the arena was a bad thing. Quite the opposite. The anti-arena/anti-development folk who’d be fine with Charlotte becoming Mayberry again never got it that the Charlotte Coliseum wasn’t going to work going forward. This was the last/best chance to find a partner to share the cost of operation for valuable infrastructure.

However, I’ve never found Johnson gracious in receiving the deal the NBA negotiated with the city. And he’s never been realistic about the challenge convincing this town – not the politicians, the average folk – that turning out for games is great use of their entertainment dollars.

I’ll try to get Rick on the phone and see if he really means that Mayberry crack. But man, Johnson cannot even stand to have Bonnell in the same room with him?