"Eternal vigilance and the Bill of Rights" might be intended to protect me but they're not going to give me my job back if I get fired on the basis of what is still legal discrimination.

The people who tout the goodness and virtue of theoretical rights in this country are most often those who have never experienced the very different reality.

You're right, 10+ years of community organizing and legislative experience don't count for anything...

If they did, hundreds if not thousands of people in this country are just as qualified as Obama to run the show.

P.S. I may not be able to produce a poll that says the majority of NY Democrats wanted a war in Iraq, but I doubt you can produce one that says they didn't. And besides, I thought it was the Republicans' job to only represent the people who voted for them and not the entire population of the state that they represent. I guess being a uniter and not a divider only counts when you're half black and speak in a baritone voice.

The only time we moved any computers at all was when someone managed to steal a laptop.

I'd hate to feed the stereotype, but our average customer was more interested in the $5 movie bin and infant clothing than in a Linux.

I'm about to become the guinea pig to test my college's reaction to people like me. Even if my faculty and administrators love me, I can still get kicked out of the school if the more conservative Board of Trustees or Board of Regents decide they don't want to deal with me. And it would be completely legal for them to do so. And then I would be stuck without my degree, without a job, without a home.

Sitting in the front of the bus sounds pretty tame in comparison. And sadly, the general populace is so ignorant of what me and my peers go through that they think I am selfishly insulting the memory of Civil Rights activists to even suggest such a thing.

So don't tell me about activism or standing up for what's right. People like me have to stand up to society simply for our existence to be acknowledged. I'm going to have to stand up to the public scrutiny of everyone in my community just to get my name on a diploma.

If Wal Mart expected its employees to know anything about computers, they wouldn't be paying them those fabulous salaries, would they?

Someone who points out the obvious fact that Obama wouldn't be where he is today if he was just some milquetoast white legislator with the same level of experience does not deserve to be called a "fucking scumbag."

More evidence that those who love Obama and his positive, hopeful, change-driven, feel-good campaign are just vicious partisans who think anyone who doesn't agree with them is a "fucking scumbag."

Come on, I might have expected that from McCain, but not from someone who clings to the coattails of His Hopeness.

Last time I checked, the only thing Wal Mart ever claimed to have expertise in was keeping prices low. Just because they sell stuff doesn't mean you have to shop there, you know.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are dozens of equally-qualified state legislators and activists who would have never even gotten a shot at a Senate seat if they didn't have the suave good looks, multiracial appeal, and assuringly deep voice of Obama. You can't deny that there are loads of white liberals who think an Obama presidency would be the best thing since sliced bread because such a thing would prove how racially enlightened we white liberals are.

I'm not saying that Obama is an upstart whelp with no legitimate claim to the presidency. He is certainly a better candidate than McCain, in any case. But he also owes at least some of his astronomical success to his race, his looks, his ability to make a pretty speech. Ten years ago, all of the current presidential candidates were political "somebodies" on the national scene... except for Obama. There are a lot of factors that account for his unprecedented sudden popularity and you'd have to be naive to think race wasn't one of them.

Of course, Hillary owes a lot to the fact that she's a woman. If she wasn't a woman, she wouldn't have married a man who would become a governor and then a president, would she? And whether or not you agree that her years as First Lady of both Arkansas and the White House constitute real experience, there's no denying that she has a unique insight to the way the presidency works since she was, in some sense, a top advisor in the administration.

But unlike Obama, I think her gender has also hurt her a lot. Hillary is regularly accused of being too shrill, too stoic, or (when she dares to display an emotion), too sensitive. She is being judged as a woman because she doesn't appear to be feminine enough, she is being judged as a presidential candidate because she doesn't appear to be tough enough, she is being judged as a feminist because she didn't leave her husband when he cheated on her, she is being judged as a lesbian man-hater because she couldn't control her husband's wanderings.

In short, yes, both Obama and Hillary owe their respective successes to their backgrounds. But I think Hillary is having to battle gender stereotypes and limitations in a way that Obama has never had to face racism in his political career.

Just commenting here because the article on FGM is nowhere to be found. WHERE DID IT GO, FAIREST BROADSHEET?