Letters to the Editor
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Memo to Joe Conason: Over the Top
This commentary would be funny if it weren't so pathetic and didn't have a Grand Canyon-wide double standard. It is, rather, a real "tribute" to the far left sensibilities in the Democratic Party: "Apologize or Shut Up." Nice.
If Conason would pull his head out of the clouds of the airy ethernet zone where he lives, he might accept some responsibility for his own candidate's "stealth" racial tactics and request either apologies or a toning-down of the rhetoric.
To wit:
Accusing Sen. Hillary Clinton of being racist for suggesting that LBJ actually passed the Civil Rights Act. Instead of calling for reason and actually reading the comments, it gets pushed by Obama's campaign as some sort of racist plot against Obama.
Accusing Bill Clinton of racism in his "fairy tale" comments. Once again, reason is nowhere to be found. Instead, the comment is cited as another example of how "racist" Bill Clinton is.
Where was the reason against Obama campaign officials who pushed the "Bradley Effect" as the reason Sen. Obama lost the New Hampshire primary?
Allowing Obama advertisements to run in Nevada that pronounce (in Spanish, no less!) that Hillary Clinton "doesn't respect our people" [Latinos]. Where were or are your sensibilities on this?
Then we have the "stealth" racist words of Obama's speech about being considered for the No. 2 spot on the ticket: "the Okey-doke" and "hoodwinked".
And as long as we're on the subject of outrageous commentary, how about expressing the same sense of moral outrage about Rev. Jeremiah Wright's scathing homophobic commentary, delivered some time ago? Or his scathing indictment of the United States of America? Or his ugly comments directed at Hillary Clinton?
Finally, the lowball tactic of trying to tie Geraldine Ferraro's comments to her legislative record begs for reason and sanity.
Ferraro's three terms in Congress produced little in the way of legislation -- again unlike Obama, whose single term in the Senate has seen him mark several milestones, in particular a landmark ethics reform package.
However, since Conason wants to tie legislative accomplishments to words and actions, perhaps he should read what Sen. Obama's U.S. Senate peers think about the Illinois Senator's "milestones".
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/politics/09obama.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
I have always thought (and been proved accurate about 85 percent of the time) that knee-jerk liberals are exactly that: knee-jerk liberals who cannot see beyond their own definition of prejudice. Conason is clearly no exception.
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If Obama is an affirmative action candidate, then
so is Hillary Clinton, as a white woman. She got to where she is, strictly hanging on to her husband's coattails. As first lady of Arkansas, she got herself a lucrative job at the Rose firm and did more for WalMart and corporations than she did fighting any civil rights suits for women or minorities.
Then she got to the White House, ostensibly as a co-president, and just as quickly lost out on her Universal Health Care initiative and gays in the military, with a hair brained idea called "don't ask, don't tell," a hypocritical adjustment to say the least.
After standing by her man over many of her husband's "bimbo eruptions" and an impeachment over Lewinsky, she beat a path to New York to run for the Senate. Not being a NY resident, to say the least, except maybe for a 6 month waiting period, she made her way to the Senate, need I emphasize, again on her husband's coattails. Does anyone really think that Hillary would be where she is, if she was not married to Bill Clinton? And now she is running for the President. Yeah, sure, she did this all on her own.
It is completely specious to lend any credibility to Ferraro's racial outburst, and I am glad that Conason is coming back to his journalistic roots. For a while there, he was sounding more and more, like Clinton mouthpiece on Salon.
It is imperative that people see the distinctions between the 2 candidates. Obama made his way on his own, and not through any dynastic nepotism. The last two weeks have seen the most vile attacks coming from the Clinton campaign, a campaign that is so riddled with disorganization, one has to pause and think, how Hillary will run the country. She cannot manage her own campaign, and she is going to manage the country?
She has done everything to dimunize Obama, from putting him as a VP on her ticket to mocking his followers, thereby implying that his supporters are all easily brainwashed.
My heart swells with pride, that a self made man like Barack Obama has gone beyond race and is winning not only African American votes, but also white. Hillary has no such pluralism. She has dangerously alienated the core of the Democratic Party. That is why she went on to apologize ad nauseam to the community yesterday. She knows that without AA, she will lose the general elections.
I am glad that Joe Conason is speaking out. For a while there, I thought Salon had become a Hillary PR firm.
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@Phamelar
As a person thoroughly disgusted with the two-party system, I will support whichever candidate fucks this country up so much that a third-party alternative becomes inevitable. It's high time the Dems and GOP went the way of the Whigs.
Normally when faced with such willful childishness and idiocy I'd simply laugh it out of the room. Unfortunately, as someone who often comes into contact with self-styled members of the 'radical Left', I know that this kind of sentiment is both more serious and more widespread among today's youth than many average Democrats may think. I'm sure that many of them have actually deluded themselves into thinking that by making proclamations such as "voting just supports the corrupt system" or the more ridiculous variant exemplified above, they are doing more than just propping up their fragile egos by an empty and symbolic gesture or excusing their laziness. The others are just too busy trying to score tickets to the Warped Tour to be bothered to fill out a fucking voter registration form.
At this point I could lay out a compelling logical argument for voting Democratic rather than trying to completely overhaul the system with your non-vote on the basis that, while both run afoul of the paradox of collective action, the former offers far more reward for far less risk. But I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm just going to point out that this kind of thinking is the most rank example of insular class elitism I've ever personally encountered, made all the worse by the fact that I have yet to see it recognized as such. Because if you strip away the grandiose rhetoric, what is left is the secure knowledge that your brave gesture of defiance will affect many people, but not yourself. Since you're most likely college-educated and within a secure income bracket, you're guaranteed to avoid military service (though I wouldn't necessarily count on this if we invade Iran). Since you probably live in one of the big liberal cities with a decent public transportation system, you probably have little awareness of the impact of high gas prices on middle-to-lower-class people who (gasp) actually NEED to drive a car to get to work. So of course you can afford to hope for more war on the basis that it will 'send a message' or higher gas prices because it will drive the need for alternative fuels and everyone who drives is a fascist anyway. Because the people who will actually be directly, severely affected by this exist only as a caricature in your mind.
People are always asking, "what's the matter with the left?" Here you have your answer. Is there any doubt that we would have won 2000 and 2004 if not for these holier-than-thou types? If only the right had their equivalent. But as much as the evangelicals may bitch and moan about McCain, the specter of Hilary or Obama will be enough to force them out of their holes and into the booths, because when it comes down to it, their self-preservation instinct is still intact (albeit misguided).
I hope you enjoy living in the clouds, Phamelar. Would that we were all so fortunate.