You just said a bundle. "it's more than white bread." And if Americans are still missing this fact that we don't live in such a world, then the real world to most average Americans really IS the TV "reality" of the Cosby Show and the crime report on the Six 'O Clock News.

Did you even watch the same interview? I just got finished watching it. I think you came away from it with the totally wrong impression. Having just experienced violence the way you personally did just recently, how do you jive your criticisms of a man trying to help his community, a community blighted with the same kind of violence that is more and more blighting our city, our neighborhoods (I live between Potrero Hill and the Mission, and gang violence has been especially bad -- not long ago I was ordered to the ground at gunpoint by officers in pursuit, my friends and I having wandered inadvertently into a crime-scene one warm weeknight evening). Daily, some new act of violence. Almost weekly, a new murder blocks from where I live.

This is the America that Reverend Wright ministers to daily, for almost 40 years. Give the man some credit. He has said things that show him to be "bitter" toward a system that is rigged against black youth, youth of color, the poor, the downtrodden. But when he says "God damn America", I'm not so proud that I do not stop for a moment and ask myself what I, an American, have done to prevent these wrongs, and to what degree I too am culpable.

This is the hard to hear message of the Obama campaign -- we share together hope and triumph, but also failure and culpability. So if "God" damns America, it is Americans who carry out that damnation.

You are doing, figuratively, the devil's work when you incessantly call into question the culture that made the Obama nomination a plausibility. When you lessen the real desires and complaints of this whole new group of politically active persons this election cycle, you are doing the opposition a favor. I don't see Clinton trying to capitalize on the real raisons d'etre of this exceptional election cycle: change, hope, fixing the rigged system, letting Americans back into the political process.

Wright was talking about Government failing, God damning Rome, England and ultimately America. First the government, but also the people who have for so long failed to stop the government. So yes, absolutely, yes, we did fail, all of us, and "god damn" us for it.

And every day you drive that spike deeper into the heart of the progressive left with your support of a pretend candidate, with an imaginary hope of winning, and you slag the probable candidate, you are doing Rush Limbaugh's work, you are doing John McCain's work, you are doing Karl Rove's work.

The game may be fixed, but I'm still betting on black. Do you want to change your bets, Ms Walsh? Hopefully its not too late.

ignorant sexists

You know, every time I come close to supporting Senator Obama, I read another virulently sexist post by one of his supporters, and I pause.

--SusanGSMcGee

You make a lot of very good points. Sexism is alive in the culture and the campaign.

But there are a great many reasons for people to support Obama/not support Clinton that have nothing to do with sexism.

Maybe Tim Russert is a sexist threatened by a strong woman. Maybe, being from Buffalo, NY, he has it in for Clinton because of her husband's (and her, at least in public) support of "free trade" which has so devastated many industrial U.S. cities. Maybe it's a combination.

I like strong, smart women, but I don't trust Clinton because of her hawkishness (yes, including the war vote), her economic "centrism," and the petty, childish, Machiavellian campaign she's run (seems to me she's triangulating, deliberately stoking racial tensions to her benefit and the detriment of Obama, the Dem party, and the country as a whole).

If you're into human rights/progressive politics/etc., and think Obama would likely address these issues, I'd urge you to focus more on this than the worst of his supporters.

Some of Hillary's supporters aren't acting very "progressive" either, as you may have noticed.

And frankly, this isn't just a popularity contest. I for one would like to see the Bill of Rights restored...

Coming Soon: "Bomb, Bomb Iran," a duet by Presidential threshold surpassers John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

weepingforbrunnhilde, littlelordbaltimore, and so many more who have put into words your sadness, anger and disdain for this latest piece of Walsh drivel. Your letters are my main reason for reading Salon.

I have to say, no one in my experience has ever made it more clear to me, a white feminist, how certain other whites who call themselves liberals and feminists, can be called "so very white." Read: so damn blind--you see only your own struggle, even as you congratulate yourself that you see everyone's equally.

It's not that you cannot understand--you will not understand, Joan. Very big difference. But you pat yourself on the back for being a liberal; for being fair; for being smarter; for being all those good things. And you are the very last to see, the very last to know. You parrot exactly the same talking points as any Republican Bush/McCain cheerleader. You just don't want to know.

Yes, America has the potential and has occasionally been a great nation. But it has also been a nation that has committed ghastly sins. I say this because I am a patriot and because this is not what the likes of John Adams, et al would have desired for us. Builders of empire, makers of unending war for profit (which even Eisenhower warned against), a government that condoned slavery even as it said "all men were created equal"--our own ability for greatness and made us all the more small and mean when we have not lived up to it. We have had so much farther to fall because of the documents and ideas that made this country.

It is the job of any liberal, of any patriot to question and harangue his or her government when he or she thinks that that government is wrong. And will you tell me that it has not been grievously wrong, many times? Will you tell me it has not been a hypocrite of gargantuan proportions? To deny our faults does not makes us stronger. Only a puny coward believes that. To admit our faults and then fix them is what has made us great when we are great. And will always be the only thing that does. And it always comes from the people--not the government. Any great change in US history has started at the grass roots level and been forced on the government, except the creation of the government.

I am ashamed of you, Joan. As a feminist and a US citizen. I believe you to be hypocritical, short-sighted, and intellectually dishonest.

I once really loved Salon. It was an automatic go-to. Now, I come here to see "opposing viewpoint" and to read the letters of some very thoughtful and talented letter-writers. I come here for a preview of how the MSM is going to try to disparage Obama today. How sad is that?

How the mighty are fallen.