Letters to the Editor
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@ljwalker53
ljwalker53: "On a related note: I had my own "intimate" encounter today with an angry Obama follower (see earlier posting here). I have to say: It doesn't make anybody feel very good to be personally attacked on any level..."
Someone I know had a John Kerry sticker on his car in 2004. One day he went to his car, in a parking garage, and was greeted with the lovely sight of his car's front hood covered with acid (just like in "Fatal Attraction," only his crime was supporting the wrong candidate, not sleeping with Glenn Close).
Someone else I know had John Kerry signs in his yard. She woke up or returned home on multiple occasions to discover them missing or torn up.
Hearing these stories, I have pretty well resolved never to broadcast my political convictions via my home or vehicle. It's just not worth attracting the attention of random, inappropriately vindictive people. Plus, I doubt having a bumper sticker or sign really affects anybody else (maybe it does, who knows).
All of this said, I was heartened the other day went I went on a walk through some nearby neighborhoods and noticed Barack Obama signs in many of the windows. (The standard poster is a sort of duotone image of his face -- it looks cool.)
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Doloresflower
Thank you. My letter was heartfelt, but frankly my heart is breaking.
I have had the greatest hope that a President Obama would help the real process of ending racism in this country.
I know, I know it is too much to put on one man's shoulders, but as I think of it now, I realize I was really putting too much on the shoulders of the people of the United States of America. We still are not ready, as a people, as a nation and especially as human beings.
From the time I was a little girl, in the late 1950's and early 1960's I never understood what difference a person's skin color made. I could not understand the horrible things I heard coming from the mouths of people I loved and respected and I never really understood where I came from, if those around me thought that way. Did I jump out of the womb into an alien culture? And it wasn't just the race, nationality, religious prejudices I couldn't comprehend, it was also the hatred of homosexuals, once I learned what they were, or the woman hating or man hating and all the ridiculous, nonsensical hating of one type of person for another. I only knew that we all had one thing in common, we were human beings, living on planet Earth, doing the same things as every other person did.
When it was my turn to be a mother, and having picked a husband who thought the way I did, we didn't distinguish any one person from another with our son. He didn't know that his first little "girlfriend" in nursery school was African American, he just knew her as whatever her name was (I can't remember it at the moment) and that he liked her. It was a relative who figured out that she was black and told him before we could stop her. His response? She's not black, she is brown! He didn't know about race. Now the genie was out of the bottle and we knew that he would never be the same innocent little boy he had been only minutes before.
We raised him to see people as people first and formost and not to put a label on them. It wasn't easy, as we found out. There was just so much inbred discrimination and hatred in this world, but we did our best and after some rough patches he has become a man who can see beyond the differences and as Dr. King begged, judge people on the content of their character and not on the superficialities that don't matter one iota.
Another dream dies today...
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The big blunt racism club again...
doloresflower: Ferraro didn't say that it is an additional thing that he's black: she said it's the only thing.
Actually she didn't. She said it was a precondition to Sen. Obama getting to where he is.
And she is right. When he was a relatively unknown contender in the early race, he got tons of free coverage. Is the country ready for a black president? Is he black enough, i.e. will blacks turn out for him? At this point it was all about brand awareness, and Mr Axelrodt made clever use of it.
And with the first woman seriously running for slot #1, Sen. Obamas origins helped neutralise Hillary's own uniqueness. It definitely helped to stand out in the early race as well, before the field of contenders was pruned. Even now there are tons of articles discussing this - the "Brand Amerika" one here on Salon, or confessing Hillary hater Dowd's musings about the election's feelgood factor concerning gender and race.
The race card has been played very carefully by the Obama campaign, but it has been played. I remember Michelle Obama deflecting criticizm about Sen. Obama's thin resumee in racial terms ("We've always been told to wait, time's not ripe for..."). Did anyone spin analyse this? Not that I can recall.
To say that a certain factor, like race or gender, was an essential factor to get where you are is very different from saying that is all the qualification you got. Racism, like anti semitism, is the big blunt character crushing club designed to make you shut up, to ultimately discredit and silence you.
I have no respect for Mr. Penn, and I'm convinced that in his reality demographic groups and their tensions are a fact that can be exploited. Rove bragged about it, and doubtless Obama has his own number crunchers who mercifully stay in the background. The problem in my view is that Penn's blatant self promotion set a perception frame to spin-analyse a lot of Clinton camp comments to their most negative possible interpretation. Axelrodt too is definitely stoking the flames, because it helps to confirm the "Clinton is divisive" campain mantra.
Anyway, the question is academic at the moment, because Sen. Obama is where he is. Race and gender are minor factors now, they may become more important again in the main election (suppose Ms. Rice were McCains running mate?). Now it is about qualification, and I appreciate Sen. Obama's declaration here.