Letters to the Editor
softdog
Published Letters: 186 Editor's Choice: 8
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AKA Smith channels Elizabeth Cady Stanton
[Read the article: What does Hillary want?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]AKA Smith channels Elizabeth Cady Stanton
AKA says: "You do understand that the feminist movement is designed to provide equal rights for women. Are you thrall to the delusion that women have achieved equal rights. That's what I meant by women first. When women achieve equal rights then I will worry more about men."
AKA - You can't treat such things as separate. I suggest you take a look at An Open Letter to the White Feminist Community, which specifically debunks using this to avoid dealing with racism, as have many women of color. http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/
AKA says: "You cannot quote a single racist statement from either Bill or Hillary Clinton."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-07-clintoninterview_N.htm
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."
Okay, how is equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans" not racist? Also, she's misrepresenting the poll results.
Frankly AKA you remind me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, now best known for being tarnished by her speech decrying the exclusion of women from the 15th Amendment.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/dubois/classes/995/98F/doc29.htm
It started well enough, with Stanton saying: "All artificial distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex, are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally destructive to national life and prosperity."
But alas she quickly reveals her white lady entitlement:
Will the foreign element, the dregs of China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all they know ? ...Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book, making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E. Dickinson...shall American statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the effete civilizations of the Old World?
This can't be excused as the ignorance of the times. Cady, an informed contemporary of Fredrick Douglas, starts by admitting "All artificial distinctions...are equally oppressive" then abandons this to rant about "political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed". In her fury she tries to pretend interwoven issues are mutually exclusive and becomes a hypocritical bigot.
You're kind of sounding the same AKA. Think about it.
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@Xrandadu Hutman
[Read the article: Clinton: "I am in this race"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow. Got it in one.
B-sides rule.
It was the theme to a late night radio show I hosted in college. A long time ago.
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Stop blathering about who is voting, because you don't really know.
[Read the article: Obama basically concedes two upcoming primaries]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"It's a good and noble thing that black voters vote for Obama, unthinkingly. It's an evil racist thing for white voters vote for Hillary unthinkingly."
Um, no.
It's a false exaggeration to claim an entire group is voting for one or the other, let alone unthinkingly.
People keep making these declarations as if they were based in fact, instead specualation based on polls which have proven to have uneven accuracy.
A major media failure is unquestioning acceptance of data without any examination of methodology. Even careful polls may only show a momentary emotion to how a question is worded.
There's increasing evidence major polls are losing accuracy, leaving out cell phone users and other hard to reach groups.
As a column in the New York Times pointed out month ago:
...so many pollsters fail to disclose basic facts about their methods. Very few, for instance, describe how they determine likely voters. Did they select voters based on their self-reported history of voting, their knowledge of voting procedures, their professed intent to vote or interest in the campaign? Did they use actual voting history gleaned from official lists of registered voters?
Fewer still report the percentage of eligible adults that their samples of likely voters are supposed to represent...Incredibly, some organizations routinely report results without any indication of whether a live interviewer or a recorded voice asked the questions.
In California, two pollsters — including the one showing a huge, erroneous lead by Mr. Obama — failed to disclose the demographic characteristics of their samples. Only a handful of pollsters that conduct statewide surveys routinely provide this data...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/opinion/07blumenthal.html
So perhaps you should stop assuming you know WHO is voting and focus on the end results instead.