Letters to the Editor
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From Joan Walsh
lateagain, you're actually one of my favorite posters, and this was a really wonderful post. But I wasn't feeling sad about what the letters said about me, but what they said about this race. I think about all of this more than most of you (but maybe not you personally) will ever know. I think the tribalism, to use your word, is lamentable, but also real. When I was getting down on these letters over the weekend, I also reminded myself: You wanted to have a conversation on race? Well, there it is, baby! It ain't pretty, but actually, a lot of good things have come of it. There are some great letter writers in both camps who are really baring their souls, their biases, their backgrounds, their political analyses. Some fervent Clinton and Obama supporters talk to one another, stil, with respect, even affection. On balance, given how ugly it is (and it is ugly, the history of race in this country is ugly), we might be proud of ourselves when this is over.
Geraldine Ferraro comes up a lot in these threads. I was on vacation, folks. My daughter is a senior in high school; we took a long-planned week's vacation in Arizona, watching spring training, as we've done every year since 1996. I've written about it often. When she was in 7th grade, I promised her we'd spend a week her senior year, and we did. Right before that, I went to the PolicyLink conference in New Orleans, and I cut into my official vacation (poor me! working in New Orleans!) to write about it, and then I went silent. I truly thought I had said that publicly. But if you go back, I wasn't selectively ignoring Ferraro, I was resoundingly quiet. (Although my best friends, all Obama supporters, made me talk about it non-stop on vacation). I admit: I did choose not to weigh in on Geraldine Ferraro from my vacation. I love my job, but not that much.
Thanks for asking!
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@ Joan
I wasn't trying to be unfair, and if I am wrong I apologize. I said "Weatherman" because in the midst of a deep brain freeze I could not come up with the name Ayers, who was once a ...Weatherman. If you talked about Wright only, and not about Ayers, then of course you are right.
But I did say - twice - that I was giving a very incomplete account of your appearance on Hardball because while I was trying to watch it one of my sons was trying to talk to me, and most of my attention was on the conversation with my son. The paragraph about Wright begins with "Oh. I think there was something about..." I was announcing that I was not certain of what followed.
I even said I would get, and would deserve, hate mail for the haphazard way I was remembering and reporting the show. And I did!
Concerning your comment that you looked unhappy because you had just finished reading these letters, I'm not quite sure what to say. For some time now your readers have been perplexed if not angry about the lack of balance in your coverage of Obama and Clinton. You haven't answered these posts, including those which ask you directly to explain why it is necessary to write column after column after column examining Wright in microscopic detail while giving Clinton a virtual pass on substance.
You haven't responded to those comments, and you haven't really changed your focus. If the comments make you sad, I am sorry to hear that. But just as you seem to think criticism of Obama is in the end helpful because it makes him a better candidate, perhaps you might give some thought to why so many readers, including people I think you would describe as important and long term contributors to Salon, found so much to question in your choice of what to write about, and how to write about it.
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You are very welcome Joan Walsh
And while you are pondering on your missed opportunity of being a fair and balanced editor, consider your many silences on some of the most egregious Clinton behavior and arrogance in these primary elections.
Hillary Clinton singing the virtues of John McCain who was more fit to be CIC than Obama. Imagine. Throwing your opponent from your own party under the bus.
The false argument on "electability." Read race. A black man can never be elected as POTUS, especially if he is running against Clinton. So AA need never aspire to any high office in the land.
The hail of sniper bullets in Bosnia and bringing peace to Ireland, both claims resoundedly exposed and debunked.
The 3 am ad on the eve of Ohio and the Osama Bin Laden ad on the eve of Pennsylvania. Wonder whose playbook she has been cramming in her free time?
Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and is now positioning herself to "obliterate Iran." Didn't she say that she would end the war in Iraq?
Her gas tax exemption was a hoot. Backfired didn't it?
Joan, you wrote so many blogs on Wright that your credibility ended up in the gutter. You did not write a single blog on keeping Hillary honest, but you left no stone unturned in damning Obama every chance you got.
You reap what you sow. Calling us creeps is not insulting at all. Consider the source who cannot make a distinction between an honest run for office and a dishonest pol who is so beyond shame that she will rather destroy her party than cede to the democratic process which brought her to the brink of defeat.
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@ Joan
Creepy GOP trolls? I hope that's not directed at me. I am an uncreepy Obama supporter.
I haven't seen so much of the hardball Chicago politics. What I've seen is Obama repeatedly giving graceful, even statesmanlike, answers to provocative questions. When he is asked what he thinks of President Clinton saying that the Obama campaign is the greatest fairy tale, Obama smiles and says "I think he wants to help his wife." In every instance I've seen, Obama has fielded this kind of question without resorting to the low road.
Your candidate, on the other hand, won't even refute, on 60 Minutes, the accusation that Obama is a Muslim without adding the wholly inappropriate "as far as I know."
There's a word for that kind of campaigning. The word is creepy.