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• Friday, August 22, 2008 01:02 PM

  In My Lit. Crit. Class, We Learned All About "The Other"

  so I'm going to endlessly blather on about "The Other" here. And "exoticism." And did I mention healing, or the ignorance of the American voter, or "Americans too doltish to comprehend multiculturalism" as Frank Rich so horse-ishly put it?

  And that is actually why people cannot stand to vote for Obama -- the puerile, relentless accusations that we're a bunch of morons "too doltish" to submit to the vain racism that is real "multicultural" education. That we are "too doltish" to celebrate and appreciate the miraculous existence of Obama, that we "just don't know him yet" and may never really know him because we're small-minded and unwilling to see his complicated and "exotic" fabulousness.

  Look, I know this is just a bunch of campaign insiders stroking the mythology on Salon, but could any of you be honest enough to acknowledge that Democrats who aren't voting for Obama aren't voting for him because of what they DO know about him, not what they haven't yet "experienced" or "felt" or "transcended in their black little hearts"? Could you actually respond to the real criticism of the candidate and the Party instead of setting up increasingly absurd straw men and tipping them over?

  Could you pretend this is a real political discussion?

  —Tina Trent Read Tina Trent's other letters
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