Jan Brewer 'felt a little threatened' by President Obama ... really?

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's now famous photo-op with Barack Obama, in which she is seen pointing her finger at the president, has gone viral. And now, so has Brewer's explanation.

According to Brewer, when she encountered President Obama on the tarmac at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport on Wednesday, she gave him a handwritten letter inviting him to lunch and to survey the border, and instead, he dressed her down about parts of her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, in which she described a previous encounter with the president in the Oval Office in which he was, in her words, "condescending, professorial, and patronizing."

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Brewer said she was taken aback. And she added:

"I felt a little bit threatened, if you will, in the attitude that he had, because I was there to welcome him," she said.

Threatened?

Perhaps what Brewer meant was that she felt a bit threatened by the presence of Secret Service agents all around her as she thrust her finger into the president's face. Or, perhaps she felt threatened at the prospect of the terrible publicity such an awkward photo op might produce...

Or, well you know, he is a rather tall and swarthy man (ahem).

Brewer's faux pas can be read any number of ways. Not surprisingly, for African-Americans, it's an unpleasant reminder of a stereotype that has dogged particularly black men for ages: that no matter how accomplished, or calm (and Obama is nothing if not both) they are, black men are "intimidating."