Letters to the Editor
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Sinbad got to where he is today...
...because he is black. No fat white guy with pastel-colored parachute pants would have reached co-equal foreign policy experience in the Balkans with Hillary.
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Racist? Maybe. Hack? Read on.
If you're weighing Ferraro, do also throw into the mix her breathtaking piece on superdelegates in the 25 February New York Times.
From same:
>>But the superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country.
and:
>>And I am watching, with great disappointment, people whom I respect in the Congress who endorsed Hillary Clinton — I assume because she was the leader they felt could best represent the party and lead the country — now switching to Barack Obama with the excuse that their constituents have spoken.
No wonder she's pissed -- democracy really IS messy.
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Ferraro is right
From The Hotline, Obama media strategist David Axelrod commenting on how the Clinton campaign should respond to Ferraro's remarks:
"They ought to set a tone and do what we've done when people have said things not in keeping with what is the spirit of our campaign."
From a New York Times magazine profile of
Axelrod of April 1, 2007:
"With Obama’s candidacy, Axelrod is placing a gaudy bet: that the symbolic significance of race has now begun to flip. An underlying message of the campaign is that African-American candidates can symbolically represent the future. I asked him if he thought that Obama’s race would be a detriment. 'I don’t think of it as a detriment,' Axelrod said. 'I know that there are people who wouldn’t vote for a black candidate, but I don’t know if they would vote for a Democratic candidate anyway. But I think that in a sense Barack is the personification of his own message for this country, that we get past the things that divide us and focus on the things that unite us. He is his own vision.'"
Not in the "spirit of your campaign," eh, Axelrod? Funny, it appears to have been precisely in the spirit of your campaign a year ago.
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Exactly
"Listen to Obama respond off the cuff to the outrageous attacks on him with a quiet dignity and thougtfulness and ask yourself when you've EVER heard a leader handle himself so well.
This is supreme intelligence and talent."
Well said! I couldn't agree more. This kind of reality-grounded intellect and integrity are just what we need right now.
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Thanks Geraldine!
You're right - Obama is very lucky that he's black. David Patterson must be even luckier - he's black and blind! It must have been easy street for him!
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@ scathew
While I think my post made it clear, my headline saying I agree with Ferraro was probably a bad one. She said "only" and I clearly do not think that. Obama never rode on his race at all, as far as I can tell. It has helped him, but he doesn't appear to have ever asked for that help.
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Cluster Bombs Are Not Good for Children, Hillary
Ditto for Landmines and Sanctions
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/13/7655/
Here is another of her legislative experience besides voting for the war in Iraq
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@SwiftLoris
You're conflating two different things. To say Obama is the embodiment of his vision is a far different thing from saying he wouldn't be succeeding if not black. The fact that in some way he is the embodiment of his vision is a plus, but it does not mean his vision would be worthless otherwise. Clearly Ferraro's intent was to denigrate his ability, laying his success off to being the token candidate that, if Conason is right, Ferraro was in her time. But as Conason lays out very nicely, the parallel she tries to draw is bogus. He has earned his success in this campaign by working hard to reach voters with a message of genuine hope and change, based on his life and professional experience and his distinctive view of the world, and many of use are responding because we like what we hear him saying, how he says it, and how we think he would govern.
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Gerry is one of many
Mr. Conason, you have given us quite a rehash of what was already known. However, we are currently experiencing a not-fully explored phenomenon, one that Katrina introduced us to: A more sincere recognition of differences in our country.
There are multiple differences in our country, more than black and white. The multiplicity often gets lost in this kind of discourse because it's too complex for a press-easy narrative arc. But in the same way that there were more forces at play in Hurricane Katrina than rich against poor, there are more at play here than old white America and new black America, but that's how it gets played in stories like this.
What the competing candidacies of Clinton and Obama have uncovered through controversies like this is that many tensions between disenfranchised groups were previously glossed over to the point that the media considered them passe in much the same way that the plight of the poor in our country was glossed over, until an entire city was flooded and its inhabitants traveled far and wide to tell their stories, if they survived. There are still many voices representative of different colors and genders (there are more than two) that get heard only when enraged. Rage is what we've seen lately, and I don't think we've seen such rage since Katrina.
The rage we have now on both sides of the fight for the democratic nomination comes from a fundamental need to declare right to existence. As ugly and messy as that is, it is tragic to reduce such struggle to cliche. It is in fact something newly approachable, and it should be examined sensitively and thoughtfully.
Most of all, we need more than apology, we need discussion. We need to speak and need to be heard. For too long there has been an acceptable politeness between different populations while fear and hatred were just beneath the surface. Only real understanding can ameliorate the complex situation of so many, and that will take real courage from the media as well as the politicians.