I think KateTex is part of a fringe that would make anyone cringe.

i lost it for some moments- and i am so sorry Joan because you want an answer to your question - and yes i think they both play the 'race card' because a 'race' it is.

I see that many of Joan's remain supporters are also nice white people who insist that Obama is the real racist and the real shallow person because he carefully points out McCain's tactics. I guess that hit a little too close for home for some of you. Deny all you want, but you are part of the problem.

This is a great letters thread. I will post more later, but I just wanted to say to Faulkner Jr.: You misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that Zuckman's explanation was ridiculous; I was saying that the McCain camp's claiming George Clooney is too substantive a celebrity to be compared with "vacuous" Barack Obama, who is more like Britney and Paris, was ridiculous. By comparing Obama to two white girls, the ad also emasculates him, which has its own racial subtext, of course.

and how much do i love the word 'emasculate'!

Joan,

How about all those terms -- they're all synonyms for uppity. It's been pretty glaringly obvious the McCain camp is setting up Barack Obama as an uppity Negro without actually using the U word and denying it the whole time with pure indignation.

They are underrepresented, but present at all levels of our system, including the white house, although not as President. There have been hundred, if not thousands, of golf pros, compared to less than 50 Presidents. It's a much easier club to break into, or it should be, because talent is not limited by public perceptions. My point is that Woods broke into the top tiers of a profession even when there were specific regulations forbidding him from playing at some clubs. And he didn't do it based on saying "You have to give me advantages because I'm discriminated against". He did it on his own. He has criticized even friends who brought up race, because he doesn't want his win tainted by implications of favoritism. And he has been successful. There are others who did this. Colin Powell comes to mind. He never was "a black leader", he didn't emphasize his race - he is simply a very accomplished *man*, not a very accomplished *black man*. Both prove that truly talented and hard-working people can succeed even if they actively reject racial politics, which Obama has not done.

All he needed to do to win over people like me was to state, early and often, that he didn't think that "shuck and jive" and "Jackson won in N. Carolina" were racially loaded phrases, and that he didn't want race to play a role in this campaign. Instead, he tolerated and subtly encouraged the attacks on Clinton of race-baiting. He chose to allow his supporter's to focus on the racial aspects of this campaign, at the expense of focusing on qualifications. He might have lost if he had let the focus be on experience - it would have been a gamble. But he would have been able to come back and run again, with more experience and the knowledge that comes from having run before. He might even have been VP. He made his choices.

Earlier in the thread someone wrote: "He's also skinny and he talks about that too, but you don't see fat people screaming about him playing the weight card."

Today The Wall Street Journal's Amy Chozick played the weight card: "But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them."

It's not only inane, but the underlying message "HE'S NOT LIKE YOU" is yet another dog whistle for the racists which is pretty transparent with phrases like "Sen. Obama didn't begin to slim down until he played basketball". And when they aren't playing off that, they're implying he's skinny cause he's girly and, of course, elitist: "These days he stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew. (Sen. McCain is said to have a weakness for Butterfinger candy bars, jelly beans, and coffee and doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts.)"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755336096303089.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

This is how deranged Obama haters have become - just as bad as the Clinton haters Joan and other denounced and are now imitating.

I have major problems with some of Obama's politics, but I've seen little rational criticism here. Just a ton of bile from people in denial who are insulted because they are having to face their own bigotry.

Jeb suggests that Obama has tried to get a free pass because of his race. This is pretty funny stuff, coming from an unabashed Clinton supporter. Not only did Clinton make repeated gender-based appeals (which was totally fine), but where the hell would Clinton be if it weren't for the good luck of having married a popular ex-President? My guess is she'd still be a corporate lawyer on the board at Wal-Mart.

Like many if not most of the PUMA dead-enders, jebldmm is incapable of seeing her own white privilege for what it is. No Democrat ever complained about 90% or more of black voters supporting the Dem candidate when the Dem candidate was always white. Now that black voters have a viable black candidate to vote for, the irony of folks like jeb gnashing her teeth about the unfairness of it all is rich and delicious.

Eat your heart out, hater.

obama has been playing the race card since the beginning, all the way back to Carolina. He & his minnions, (the kerry-daschle 'truth-bashing squad'), had a written plan to falsely smear anyone connected to the Clinton campaign. Remember all the crap the obamalators made up & that was only the beginning. If he had any integrity he would be ashamed to show his lying, hypocritcal face. But of course, he's all blind ambition & hutsba (sp), so any conscience he may have ever had was over-ridden long ago when he decided to join Trinity in order to get elected to his first office for his first lame performance. Reverend Wright warned us all he would say anything to get elected. People better be prepared, obama will be the next W & axelrod is already the new karl rove. It's going to be a devastating ride and this time our own party sold us all out.