Letters to the Editor
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More brinksmanship
Here is what Senator Clinton said:
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964...It took a president to get it done.”
And here is what Senator Clinton might have said:
“Ralph Nader's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the National Traffic and Vehicle Safety Act of 1966...It took a president to get it done.”
If the intended reading was only that a president is needed to sign legislation into law, then this should have been be stated flatly, without reference to LBJ and MLK. The LBJ/Ralph Nader example could have been used instead of the LBJ/MLK example, if the statement, deliberately uttered, was a simple statement of fact not intended to suggest the ideas surrounding civil rights; race relations between blacks and whites; the fact that a white president signed legislation which began to realize the dream of a black civil rights leader; that Washington bureaucrats and nont popular movements are agents for change (cnider the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and the antiar movement); and so on. These considerations raise the question why Clinton thought it was necessary or desirable to invoke LBJ and MLK when other examples were available.
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XIP; DITTO
BTW I made that point to Joan a week ago how it was deliberate that a seasoned 35 yr candidate like Hillary would inject MLK into a lethal word play to begin with..
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Thrasher
Yes. Since there are so many examples available of a president signing legislation into law that others have advocated--Clinton could have used examples from her own experience, such as the vote on the Iraq war--that it is reasonable to assume that this particular example was chosen for its volatile ambiguity. I do not believe that the assertion that "injecting race" into Clinton's remarks is a stretch, especially for someone who claims to have 35 years of experience. To assert that all Clinton meant was that presidents sign legislation, given the range of statements that could have been used, and that race had nothing to do with it, is preposterous.
Xlp Thlplylp
P.S. Apologies for typos--I'm not used to my keyboard!
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Thrasher
You don't help me to understand. It took me a minute or so to understand your quote from the person I presume to be Mohammed Ali. I think it means that he wouldn't fight in Vietnam when the Vietcong had not insulted him as he had been insulted in his own country. Words can wound. As a boxer and a very witty man, he was admired by all those fans of that sport (which I do not like) but Tiger Woods is also regarded with affection and admiration by everyone interested in golf. His father was African American, his mother Asian, his wife European. Tiger doesn't talk about race because he is tops at what he does.
You say that you are a black activist but you don't explain what you want to achieve. As this is the worldwide web, it might suit your purpose better if you explained why you think you are so entitled. I was reading about Michelle Obama in "Vanity Fair" and she has the attitude that it's now or never for her husband which struck me as just a little arrogant, if, as a white woman, I can say that. There are politicians everywhere who don;t succeed the first time they seek public office. They put that down to experience and they try again. Isn;t there a lot of talk about Barack Obama being young, although as a white woman, I would not be considered young at the age of 47, as Mother Nature tells you that you are not. All the other Democrat candidates - apart from HRC and BO - have valid reasons for being annoyed with the media. I had to go to Wikipedia (which may not be the most trustworthy of sources) to find out anything about them.
It's a very strange type of democracy that you have in the US if some candidates can be completely ignored and other glamorised by various pundits whose motives should be open to question.
As to your protestation that you're not against white women, I think you should read your own posts. Without knowing anything about me, you dismissed me as a privileged white woman. You can't argue with that. You must think that the U.S. is the whole world. As you say over there "Wake up and smell the coffee". I've been writing about the candidate who might bring us a more peaceful world and, as your media has decided to exclude certain candidates, I've only had Clinton and Obama to read about because even Edwards barely gets a look in. We don't need to take any lectures from America about democracy when someone with half an eye can see that democracy is just a hazy concept in the U.S. with money the most important arbiter.
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Golden Gams
Salon's Role
Perhaps there [are] some solid points to Kamiya's article. However, I would suggest that Salon is one media outlet that has siezed on this little debate, and explo[d]ed it to paramount. I am not suggesting the debate is not worth having, I just think that [it]is not worth having when the results are quite likely to be the diminishment of the democratic party and their ultimate nominee. Since Iowa I have been watching with a growing fear that the snide toing-and-fro-ing ('fro, as in 'afro'?) will carry on to fatigue level, and if the Republicans nominate McCain, enough votes will be siphoned off to throw the election.
[....] those encouraging the debasement of our candidates will be responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths the loss in this election would surely mean.
These little debates are always going to happen, and fine, but I hope that the tenor will retain a degree of respectablility and a modesty that does not encourage an all too eager tabloidistic political press. It is not a surprise that Salon has shown a caustic attachment to this part of the debate; Joan Walsh's racial and ethnic angst has been well explored by her in many columns, and, topically, issues of gender are expounded on increasing, exemplified by the sometimes meritous, sometimes silly Broadsheet. I just hope Salon is able to evade tabloidism of serious issues and not contribute to the, ahem, hysterics we seem to be destined for.
-- Gams on Glass