Air America’s Randi Rhodes has been suspended after describing both Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton “fucking whores.” [Jossip]
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ridwah
She’s trying too hard.
M Shane
To bad , Randi’s good; but after Clinton’s attack on Sam Powers, she should know that censorship is alive and well in America and civil rights are being passed over for one and all. Given her range of expression and the tenor of her show it shouldn’t suprise us.
Jack Jett
At what point will the media be satisfied with it’s demonization of Senator Hillary Clinton and her family? Randi Rhodes has stooped lower than Pat Robertson.
I keep asking people, other than your dislike of her personality, what specifically do you dislike about the Hillary Clinton. I can’t get any specific that would warrent her being sentanced to political death by the media.
When we try and regroup after Obama gets the nomination, would you, if your were Hillary Clinton be willing to work hard to bring the party together?
Who is better qualified to do that…..Randi Rhodes or “that fucking whore” Hillary Clinton.
The fact that supporters of Obama are not outraged over this sort of behaviour is a sign of divisiness.
Leland Frances
Wait? “Clinton’s attack on Sam Powers”???? You mean it was Sen. Clinton who called Samantha Power a “monster….stooping to anything” and not the other way around? Then it must have also been Sen. Clinton who told the British press she had inside information that “of course” Obama would not stick to any exact time table for withdrawing US troops from Iraq that he’s talked about in the campaign or was that former Obama foreign policy guru Power? Explain it to us Obama Wan Kenobi.
Good for you, Jack Jett! But get ready to duck from all the Obamabombs that will be thrown at you for speaking the truth.
Ron
Sorry Jack, Randi was dead on! Not sure who you’ve been asking about specifics reasons as for why some dislke Hillary and not sure why they haven’t been able to answer but I can easily give you and others reasons.
1)She’s has basically built a campaign based on the idea “vote for me because the other guy is so bad and unexperienced.” When in truth he (Obama) has more legislative experience than she does but Hillary and her supporters so conviently ignore his 8 years as a Illinois state senator.
2) She has constantly exaggerated her “resume” and totally plays on the ignorance of those who do not follow politics. Prime example was when she had to retract her claim that she was in the middle of gun fire some years ago when she landed in Bosnia. That was no misspeaking as she claims, that was a flat out lie.
3)She attempted to make a HUGE deal out of and accused Obama of plagerism when in fact ALLLLL presidential candidates have speech writers and it was later pointed out that she has “borrowed” quotes from others also. Talk about the epitome of hypocrisy. Again, another attempt to play on the ignorance of those who do not know any better.
4)She attemped to lambaste Obama for his flyers that said that she supported NAFTA when in FACT she DID. Not only in her book, the recent released 11,000 pages of the Clinton years confirms that she attended at least 4 different meeting in SUPPORT of NAFTA.
5)Now she’s making a big stink about seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan though she agreed to, as did all of the other Democratic candidates, the rules of the DNC to punish states that moved up there election date. She knew this, agreed to it and now wants to bitch. To make things worse now she has the audacity to blame Obama for all of this, as if the rules were set up just to favor him!
Need I go on? The funny thing is, when the election first started I was in the middle of who I was voting for but leaned definitely in her direction.Not now…her nasty, lying, gross exaggeration of events and her record and her Tonya Harding style of clawing her way to the Oval Office has been a complete turn off.
This is not a sign of divisivness it is a sign of the backlash from a piss poor ran campaign.
Kid A
As an Obama supporter, I do think this is ridiculous. Language like that seems more likely to come from an eighth-grader rather than an educated radio personality.
It seems much of the campaign has not been actual discussion of the candidates themselves, but back-and-forth ire between surrogates and candidate’s supporters.
I have reasons, which I consider good, for supporting Obama, just as others have reasons, which they consider good, for supporting Clinton. It doesn’t mean that we have drunk the Kool-Aid or are supporting someone who should drop out, respectively.
Let’s keep the focus on the candidates.
Afroguapo
AGREED. All this ugliness needs to be taken out of it (“She’s a monster,” “She’s a whore,” “He’s lucky and in the position he is because he’s black,” “So what if he won South Carolina, so did Jesse Jackson in 84”.) Molly Ivins, didn’t realize she died… may she rest in peace.
Molly Ivins: Not. backing. Hillary.
Friday, January 20, 2006; AUSTIN, Texas (Creators Syndicate) — I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.
If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, “Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.” Bobby Kennedy — rough, tough Bobby Kennedy — didn’t do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.
What kind of courage does it take, for mercy’s sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.
The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway (“First, you have to win elections”). Can’t you even read the damn polls?
Here’s a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, “There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008.”
This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by “a string of bad new from the Middle East … into calling for premature retreat from Iraq,” versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.
Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.
You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I’m telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven’t got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.
Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I’m serious as a stroke about this — that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who’s ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.
Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were “German dogs.” They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless “string of bad news.”
Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can’t get up and fight, we’ll find someone who can.
Jack Jett
Ron.
So can we assume that Senator Clinton is such a horrible person that we wouldn’t want her to be involved in Democratic politics at all? My point is that she will probably not win this nomination.
Do you perceive her as so evil that when she bows out of the race, that you want her and her family to just go away?
For Randi Rhodes to call Geraldine Ferraro the female David Duke is so freaking offensive for someone who has fought relentlessly for years for the rights of all. Ferraro’s comments were not racist but the media called them “racist”.
Randi Rhodes is now just another James Dobson, Strom Thurman, Robert Tilton, and far worse than
Don Imus. I have watched the video 3 times, and she was not funny in the least, just vindictive and evil.
Leland Frances
“consider Obama’s stirring tale for the Selma audience about how he had been conceived by his parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, because they had been inspired by the fervor following the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights demonstration that was commemorated March 4. “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala.,” he said, “because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Ala.” Obama was born in 1961, and the Selma march occurred four years later, in 1965. The New York Times reported that when the senator was asked about the discrepancy later that day, he clarified: “I meant the whole civil rights movement.” – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3304.html
“Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser. The death toll was 12.†– Associated Press, May 8, 2007
“He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was “the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.†“I just did that last year,†he said, to murmurs of approval. But, contrary to Mr. Obama’s comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.†– http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html
“At the [January 2008] debate, Obama stated: “I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer.†At an AFL-CIO conference in June 2003 while campaigning for the Senate [he said], “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare coverage. That’s what I’d like to see.â€- http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/clinton-hopes-to-paint-obama-as-healthcare-flip-flopper-2008-01-22.html
“But for your audience, your readership, the one thing that I do want to make sure is [that they understand that is regarding…] the human rights ordinance in Illinois that is the equivalent of what we’ve been attempting to do at the federal level and that I was a chief cosponsor of and then passed….†-http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid50021.asp
Not only was Obama not a cosponsor of any kind of SB3186, he was no longer even in the Illinois Senate when it was voted on.
– http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=3186&GAID=3&DocTypeID=SB&LegId=11145&SessionID=3&GA=93
“Obama said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow Democrat from neighboring West Virginia, had read the intelligence estimate as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and after a brief pause said the then-chairman had voted against the war resolution. However, Rockefeller was not the chair at the time and voted in favor of the war authorization.†– Fox News, 3/3/08
“[Obama said] in a memoir published in 1995 that his grandfather was a Muslim and that [Barack] means “blessed†in Arabic. … On the campaign trail during his 2004 Senate race, Obama told reporters that “Barack†was Swahili for “blessed by God.†– http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2694.html
“during a meeting with reporters at his Illinois campaign headquarters after his election to the U.S. Senate he ridiculed as “a silly question†whether he would run for president or vice president before his term ends in 2011. “I’ve never worked in Washington,†he said. “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois.†– http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2694.html
Tim Russert: “So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?”
Obama: “I will not.” – Meet the Press, Jan. 22, 2006
“In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an “absolute obligation” to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.†– Boston Globe
“the Chicago Tribune reported that an extensive search found no basis for an episode Obama recounts about a picture he ran across in Life magazine of a “black man who had tried to peel off his skin” in a failed effort to use chemicals to lighten it. Obama writes that “seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack.” The Tribune reported: “Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, ‘It might have been an Ebony or it might have been … who knows what it was?’ (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)” – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3304.html
“I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington,” Obama said as he launched his campaign last month, “but I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” That carries a distinct echo of a line in Edwards’ announcement speech in 2003: “I haven’t spent most of my life in politics, which most of you know, but I’ve spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington.†– http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3304.html
Obama has often said he is “a constitutional law professor.†He is actually no more than a “Senior Lecturer (on leave of absence)” at the University of Chicago Law School. Think of a nurse claiming to be a doctor and you can appreciate the irritation of actual professors with his equivocation.
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Obama is likely to get the nomination but it will be after traveling a decades-long path of lies, exaggerations, and misstatements every bit as bad as anything Sen. Clinton has been accused of.
Afroguapo
Jack, while her comments may not have been racist, she was speaking in veiled code and signaling to those listening that he’s not here on merit but because of his race (that’s a charge leveled against blacks all the time of which I am intimately familiar since leaving high school). If what she said is true about Obama, of which I disagree, then Ferraro has to acknowledge that she enjoyed her meteoric rise because she was a woman (not on merit) or that Hillary had a leg up because she piggybacked off her husband to be first lady, which she touts as experience on her long resume in her quest to the White House. She knew what she was doing. In this age, people have learned to talk in code, innuendo and subtlety, save for some guy on here who was so enraged that he said Bill Richardson would be working at Taco Bell if it wasn’t for the Clintons and used the pejorative expression for Hispanics. Anyway, this article elucidates the matter quite well.
Playing the Racist Card
Ferraro’s comments about Obama were racist. Why can’t we say that?
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Posted Friday, March 14, 2008, at 12:11 PM ET
There is peculiar bit of jujitsu that white public figures have employed recently whenever they’re called to account for saying something stupid about black people. When the hard questions start flying, said figure deflects them by claiming that any critical interrogation is tantamount to calling them a racist, which they most assuredly are not. Last year, Bill O’Reilly took a jaunt up to Harlem’s famed Sylvia’s and returned with the news that blacks had learned the basics of table manners and developed opposable thumbs. When Media Matters attacked O’Reilly for his voluminous ignorance, he angrily accused his critics of distorting “a positive discussion on race and accusing me of racism.”
As Don Imus was being drummed off the air, journalists and Washington oligarchs assembled to assure us all of Imus’ decency, pointing to his good deeds on behalf of children with cancer and claiming that despite his penchant for caricaturing black people, he surely was no racist. Michael Richards marred his career by laying into a couple of hecklers with a textbook deluge of hate speech, but what disturbed him most was the fact that someone out there may have inferred that he was, you know, racist. “I’m not a racist,” Richards told David Letterman. “That’s what’s so insane.”
It gives me no joy to report that Geraldine Ferraro has now applied to join the ranks of the obviously nonracist. I was 8 when she ran for vice president and vaguely aware that a party that would promote a woman for an executive office might be a party that would one day give a kid like me a fair shake. Thus I’ve retched while watching Ferraro beeline to any television studio that would have her, flaunting her rainbow bona fides, and claiming that she’s being attacked “because she’s white” and demonized as a racist.
“The sad thing is that my comments have been taken so out of context,” Ferraro told Diane Sawyer, “and been spun by the Obama campaign as racist.”
When the New York Times reached Ferraro at home, having resigned from the Clinton campaign, she doubled down: “If you point to something that deals with race, you’re immediately a racist?” When asked whether she was sorry, she responded, “I am sorry that there are people who think I am a racist.”
The racist card is textbook strawmanship. As opposed to having to address whether her comments were, as Obama said, “wrongheaded” and “absurd,” Ferraro gets to debate something that only she can truly judge—the contents of her heart.
It’s a clever and unassailable move: How would you actually prove that Ferraro is definitively a racist? Furthermore, it appeals to our national distaste for whiners. It’s irrelevant that the Obama campaign never called Ferraro a racist. It’s also irrelevant that Ferraro said the same thing of Jesse Jackson in 1988. And it’s especially irrelevant that Ferraro apparently believes that Obama’s Ivy League education, his experience as an elected official, and his time of service on the South Side of Chicago pale in comparison with the leg-up he’s been given as a black male in America. By positioning herself as a victim of political correctness run amok, Ferraro stakes out the high ground of truth telling.
Ferraro may be the most strident, but she’s far from the first to join the rogue’s gallery of public figures who have made patently foolish claims about black people, then ducked beneath the shield of nonracism.
Fellow “not a racist” Ron Paul was busted last year when it was found that newsletters bearing his name were filled with hateful invectives directed at blacks. When the news broke, Paul swore that he was no racist and that the writings said nothing about his own beliefs. No matter that the newsletters were titled Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Political Report, and the Ron Paul Survival Report.
James Watson not only claimed that blacks had lower IQs than whites but scoffed at any notion of intellectual parity because “people who have to deal with black employees find this not to be true.” It’s true that Watson caught his share of criticism, but in its wake came a parade of defenders insisting that Watson was not a racist but a dogged, persecuted speaker of truth.
Implicit to the racist card is the idea that no racists actually live among us. After reality TV star Duane “Dog” Chapman was taped by one of his sons dropping n-bombs, a more loyal son insisted, “My dad is not a racist man. If he was he would have no hair. He’d have swastikas on his body and he would go around talking about Hitler. That’s what a racist is to me.”
The idea that America has lots of racism but few actual racists is not a new one. Philip Dray titled his seminal history of lynching At the Hands of Persons Unknown because most “investigations” of lynchings in the South turned up no actual lynchers. Both David Duke and George Wallace insisted that they weren’t racists. That’s because in the popular vocabulary, the racist is not so much an actual person but a monster, an outcast thug who leads the lynch mob and keeps Mein Kampf in his back pocket.
The bar for racism has been raised so high that one need be a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party to qualify. Had John McCain said that Hillary Clinton was only competitive in the presidential race because she was a woman, there’d be no dispute over whether the comment was sexist. And yet when the equivalent is said about a black person, it’s not only not racist, but any criticism of the statement is interpreted as an act of character assassination. “If anybody is going to apologize,” Ferraro told MSNBC, “they should apologize to me for calling me a racist.”
In some measure, the narrowing of racism is an unfortunate relic of the civil rights movement, when activists got mileage out of dehumanizing racists and portraying them as ultra-violent Southern troglodytes. Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they’d ever met would do such a thing. But most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There’s nothing sensationalistic about redlining or job discrimination. No archival newsreel can capture what it means to be viewed as a person who, minus the beneficence of well-meaning whites, simply can’t compete.
All of this leaves me wondering, Who does a guy have to lynch around here to get called a racist? If twice claiming that a presidential candidate is only in the race because he’s black doesn’t make you racist; if shouting, “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger” from stage doesn’t make you racist; if calling an accomplished black woman “the cleaning lady” doesn’t make you a racist, what does?
What is clear, however, is that black people are buckling under the weight of all this nonracism, and I’m sure, if he could, the junior senator from Illinois would gladly return all of the “favors” he’s gotten for being a black man named Barack Hussein Obama.
No, No Nanette
OMG!!! I can’t believe that anyone would be so stupid that they’d call Hillary Clinton a WHORE!!! I mean, who’d pay for that??? She can’t give it away — even Bill goes elsewhere.
Afroguapo
This white woman nails the issue well, of signaling that is, because to be explicit, one would be viewed as vile like Paul G, so in polite company, you don’t go there.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ashley_sayeau/2008/03/speaking_in_code.html
Leland Frances
Ferraro DID say the same thing about herself–that she was chosen as a VP candidate primarily because she was a woman. In addition, the thing IMMEDIATELY ignored in her original statement was that Obama would not be where he is in this election if he were a white man OR A WOMAN OF ANY COLOR.
Further, clock this FROM AN OBAMA SUPPORTER WEEKS BEFORE on Salon:
“if Obama weren’t black, he would not be the Democratic front-runner. I believe that most of Obama’s supporters are voting for him for the same reason. Like me, they’re drawn to his idealism, his youthful energy, his progressive politics. But it’s his blackness that seals the deal. …
Obama’s blackness is his indispensable asset. Without it, he would not have a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected president.
Let me be absolutely clear: This does not mean he’s not qualified. He is — and if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have a chance to be elected either. I support Obama for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with his race. I want to take a chance on a younger candidate who is less entrenched with special interests. I’ve had enough of the Bush/Clinton dynasties. And, above all, I support him because he was opposed to the Iraq war, and will turn decisively away from the disastrous militarism and ideological extremism of the Bush years.
But if Obama were a white junior senator from Illinois with the same impressive personal and professional qualities — the same intelligence, empathy, speaking skills, legislative tenure and life story — there’d be no way he’d have the name recognition to mount a major campaign in the first place. And if he did manage to run, it’s unlikely he would have inspired such a passionate and widespread following.” – http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/02/26/obama/
Please start sending those flowers of apology to Ms. Ferraro now.
Afroguapo
Sorry, there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that I am sending flowers to GF. Geraldine was signaling and I am not retracting that. I think it’s far off the mark and absurd to state generically that it’s his blackness that seals the deal. I will grant you however that it’s the perception that he transcends race, to the point that he was raceless (prior to the Wright imbroglio) and has various aspects about him with which many people can readily identify. His background draws from so many disparate sources: white Kansan globetrotting mother, African father, raised in Hawaii, living in Indonesia, an exotic name, exposed to a variety of religions by his maverick mother with an appreciation for all of them, etc. etc. It’s Bennetton and the United Nations on steriods. Also, he is captivating in that he knows how to relate to so many different types of people which I attribute to his somewhat itinerant upbringing. I went to college with a bevy of young adults who were sons/daughters of diplomats and ambassadors – they had this same unique trait as Barack. If Barack were a white junior senator who had the standard issue pedigree of going to Andover, Yale, Harvard, yeah, we wouldn’t be as engaged because it would feel like, “okay, I’ve seen this before, wait, is Project Runway on?” and wouldn’t find him that interesting. Also, I doubt that such white man, if he were to exist, would be positing the very ideas Barack is. Most likely, he would touting the same status quo script. But by the same token, I don’t think if Barack was a black American (with the same stellar educational credentials and winning personality) with two black American parents raised here, that he would be a contender in the least. So, no, I’ll leave it to you if you want to call 1-800 Flowers for Geraldine because I am certainly not doing it. P.S. Has Ferraro not heard of the Bradley effect?
Op-Ed Columnist
Obama’s Brother in China
By ROGER COHEN
BRUSSELS
So there I was, a couple of weeks back, sitting under a mango tree in western Kenya, when Senator Barack Obama’s half-sister Auma says to me:
“My daughter’s father is British. My mom’s brother is married to a Russian. I have a brother in China engaged to a Chinese woman.â€
My understanding is that this half brother living in China is Mark. He’s the son of Obama’s father and an American woman named Ruth, whom Obama Sr. met while at Harvard in the 1960s and brought back to Kenya.
That was after his marriage with Obama’s mother in Hawaii ended. Another son from the union with Ruth, called David, was killed in a motorcycle accident. In all, Obama Sr. fathered eight children by four women.
I’ve been thinking about this because not enough has been written about Obama’s family. As Auma suggested, it’s unusual in the extent of its continent-crossing, religion-melding, color-fusing richness. But the Benetton-ad family is less unusual than it may seem. This is the age of globalized, far-flung families. Remittances make the world go round.
More needs to be written because if Obama gets the Democratic nomination, you know the Republican attack machine, through innuendo and otherwise, will go after his identity, just as it went after Senator John Kerry’s in 2004.
The difference is that Obama is much more certain and coherent about who he is than Kerry was. He has built his identity in a shifting world; that resonates with a lot of Americans. His radical Chicago pastor contributed to that journey. Now Obama has grown beyond him. I have no problem with that.
But you can already see the headlines: Obama has brother in China! You can hear the whisperings about a polygamous father.
That not enough has been written about his family is strange in that Obama himself devoted a remarkable book, “Dreams From My Father,†to his quest to fill the void left by an absent Dad.
As Auma said to me: “He was trying to figure out who he was. He needed to be whole to be able to do what he’s doing now. He went about it the right way. A big chunk of his life was missing. It’s very healthy that he now knows he has these roots here.â€
Those roots were discovered during Obama’s first visit to Kenya two decades ago. During that trip, as recounted in his memoir, he encountered Ruth in Nairobi. She is described as “a white woman with a long jaw and graying hair.â€
But who is Ruth, a woman who divorced Obama’s father, remarried, and gave the family name of her second husband to her two sons by Obama Sr.? In the book she says, with less than exquisite tact, to Barack Obama: “But your mother remarried. I wonder why she had you keep your name?â€
As for Ruth’s son, and Obama’s half brother, Mark, the one in China, he’s described as studying physics at Stanford in the 1980s. “The things Mark studies are so complicated only a handful of people really understand it at all,†Ruth enthuses.
But Mark, “a black man of my height and complexion,†tells Obama his work’s a breeze. He expresses limited interest in their shared father who died in 1982 at 46: “Life’s hard enough without all the excess baggage,†he muses.
If nominated, Obama’s family baggage will get pored over. Four years ago, Bush’s people cast Kerry as un-American for speaking French. A Republican camp campaigning at the sorry nadir of Bush’s handiwork will try to portray the war hero John McCain as more American and patriotic than his opponent.
But things are different. Less fearful, Americans are less willing to be manipulated. They’ve backed Obama this far in part because they’re sick of the narrow American exceptionalism of Bush’s divisive rule.
Never before have U.S. fortunes been so tied to the world’s. Americans see that. When your mortgage is packaged into some ingenious security that’s sold to a German bank before the scheme unravels and you lose your house, the globe looks smaller.
With some 30 percent of the revenue of U.S. corporations coming from overseas, and the Chinese buying American debt, and more than seven million people naturalized in the past decade, it’s harder to separate America’s fate from that of others. Isolationism is not merely wrong, it’s impossible.
If elected, Obama would be the first genuinely 21st-century leader. The China-Indonesia-Kenya-Britain-Hawaii web mirrors a world in flux. In Kenya, his uncle Sayid, a Muslim, told me: “My Islam is a hybrid, a mix of elements, including my Christian schooling and even some African ways. Many values have dissolved in me.â€
Obama’s bridge-building instincts come from somewhere. They are rooted and proven. For an expectant and often alienated world, they are of central significance.
Afroguapo
I have a better idea. Why don’t we have Geraldine send Barack flowers?
Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize
To fully grasp why her remarks about Obama were so outrageous, take another look at her record in Congress.
By Joe Conason
Mar. 14, 2008 | Can we please, please hear no more from Geraldine Ferraro? Unless, of course, she opens her mouth to offer an abject apology to Barack Obama, which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.
After her recent excursions into political commentary, which have so badly embarrassed her and her preferred presidential candidate, a period of discreet reflection might be advised. Unfortunately, the very first line of her embittered letter of resignation to Hillary Clinton hinted otherwise: “I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself …”
That is fair warning, but also an opportunity to examine a living historical relic with candor instead of mere courtesy.
Until lately, Ferraro was an admired waxwork, a symbol of national progress and a brief entry in a child’s textbook. Then she confided her opinion of the Democratic presidential front-runner to a California newspaper. “If [Barack] Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
That sounded like folk wisdom from her home borough of Queens, N.Y., where she once represented the Archie Bunker constituency in Congress — and where racist resentment of all those “very lucky” black people was once a common refrain (and can still be heard in certain saloons and clubhouses today). Those corrosive observations usually referred to affirmative action, which threatened traditional ethnic monopolies on certain jobs and contracts in both the public and private sectors. And indeed, Ferraro’s reaction to the criticism of her stupidity is reminiscent of the resentful whining of white men who complained about “reverse” discrimination and the supposed taboos of political correctness.
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”
Not so good, Gerry. Rather than try to parse that almost incomprehensible but undoubtedly vile statement, however, let us instead analyze what Ferraro said about Obama — which probably reflects the outlook of a certain segment of white America. One way to do this is to compare his career with hers.
Unlike Obama, who had to make his way in Chicago politics on his own merits after his stint as a community organizer and local lawyer, Ferraro benefited from family and political connections when she decided to run for Congress. Her cousin Nicholas Ferraro had been the Queens district attorney, and she got her first political job as an assistant D.A. Always a reliable cog in the Queens Democratic Party, which in those days was among the country’s most corrupt and boss-ridden political machines, she didn’t have to worry much about primary or general election opponents.
Ferraro’s three terms in Congress produced little in the way of legislation — again unlike Obama, whose single term in the Senate has seen him mark several milestones, in particular a landmark ethics reform package. That wasn’t the kind of thing that Ferraro would have supported back when she was in the House, since she prided herself on cuddling up to the leadership rather than challenging the status quo in any way. She was an ordinary pork-chopper, but her personality and determination won over Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, then the House speaker.
It was the late O’Neill, a fine man in many ways, who made the mistake of recommending her to Walter F. Mondale as a vice-presidential prospect in 1984. The worthy but lackluster Democrat from Minnesota was seeking to spice up his candidacy with a different kind of running mate, and considered several potential female and African-American nominees before settling on Ferraro.
The female running mate was a clever gambit that the Democrats executed very poorly. As inspiring as the Ferraro story was when she took the stage at the July 1984 convention in San Francisco, her nomination turned out to be unhelpful to the Democratic ticket, which lost 49 states to the incumbent Republicans, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush. Circumstances were generally unfavorable to Mondale, whose own inept campaigning made matters still worse, but the initial euphoria over the first woman on a major party ticket evaporated as soon as the press took a closer look at her background.
As Village Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett later revealed, the Republican oppo researchers knew much that Mondale evidently didn’t about Ferraro and her family’s connections with organized crime, dating back at least two generations, and how she had personally profited from those unsavory bonds. (Barrett and William Bastone continued to report on those links for the Voice when Ferraro ran for the Senate in 1992, discovering literally dozens of contributions and deals that involved the worst thugs in New York.)
To Ferraro, reports of her husband’s criminal associations proved only the “anti-Italian” bias of the press. Her claims of ignorance about her husband’s real estate business — he rented space in lower Manhattan to a Mob porn operation and a Chinese sweatshop, among many other questionable deals — were not entirely plausible, since she was an officer of his company and shared office space with him. There were tax problems, too, and despite a spirited performance at a press conference where she evaded as many questions as she answered, her image never quite recovered before Election Day.
Such are the perils of tokenism. As she has forthrightly acknowledged, to her credit, her sudden elevation was attributable to her gender rather than to any innate quality of her own. She had no discernible qualifications to serve as president if anything happened to Mondale. And she had done nothing to earn her place on the ticket that had not been done by a couple of hundred other House members. Many if not most of them had done more.
Obviously the same cannot be said of Obama. He has run a masterful national campaign against a rival whose nomination was said to be inevitable when he began, and he has had to rely on his own powers of inspiration and persuasion to get this far. And the polls indicate that his story may have a far more uplifting conclusion than hers did.
Either way, she still owes him an apology.
Bill Perdue
Obama, by opposing our marriage rights, just like Clinton, and pandering to the bigot vote, just like Clinton may have done the political equivalent of sticking his foot in his mouth and then shooting himself in the foot.
It’s clear that Hillary Clinton isn’t doing much better and for the same reason, people just don’t trust her.
Here’s why.
According to investigative reporters for Mother Jones, an antiwar prounion publication, Clinton is doing a bit more that just ‘tacking to the right’. “Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. ”
“When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian “cell” whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of (Billionaire) Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democratâ€
“With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn’t back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won’t guard abortion clinics.â€
“Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons’ approach to faith-based initiatives “set the stage for Bush. Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.â€
In addition to being a closeted religious nutcase Hillary Clinton supports the essential parts of DOMA and, like all loyal Dixiecrats, echoes George Wallace, saying it’s a state rights issue. She and Obama both support the war but Hillary goes one step beyond to call for the division of Iraq into three colonial provinces, the theft of the Iraqis oil industry by US Oil companies and the extension of the war into Iran. Not to be outdone, Obama favors an attack on Pakistan, a nations whose nuclear weapons and domination by Taliban types would make them a deadly enemy.
Rupert Murdoch, gazillionaire owner of Faux News, the guy who’s the ‘neo’ in ‘neo Nazi” hosted a big fundraiser for Hillary, donating $100,0 00.00 to her campaign.
In an interview Rita Braver of CBS News Sunday Morning asked Pat Robertson, one of the worst of Republican theocratic totalitarians, “On the Democratic side, of course, everybody’s talking about Hillary Clinton. What– what would you and your followers think about her? “ His answer is illuminating. “Well she’s– tacking to the right as hard as she can tack. And– you know Hillary’s got some good points.â€
Pat Robertson and Rupert Murdoch know a good thing when they see it. But what if Hillary Clintons loses? The Clintons’ have been race and muslim baiting Obama for months but the Republicans will turn that into an acid bath of race baiting. If he survives and gets elected I’m sure Murdoch and Robertson will be able to work something out with him. They always do. They can start with their shared bigoted approach to same sex marriage.
She’s Bush Stout, he’s Bush Lite. With Democrats like these who needs Republicans.
RJ
Who isn’t excited about having the first viable Presidential candidates who aren’t white men? To ignore race and sex in this race is silly. Yes, I believe Hillary or Obama, either one, would make a great President. However, I am excited that finally we have a black candidate and a female candidate that has a chance to make history.
I do not understand Geraldine Ferraro is being attacked for acknowledging the fact that alot of other people feel like me. The candidates are both definitely qualified. This is the point. Before, qualified women or people of color have been ignored in favor of white men. John Edwards was never going to be the Democratic nominee, because people want to elect the first black President or the woman President. What is so wrong about admitting that?
For Randi Rhodes to resort to a such a sexist label is disgusting. Women are always slandered with sexual insults, and for a woman to call other women ‘whores’ just because she disagrees with them is very disappointing.
emb
Randi’s way out of line just from a common civility standpoint; nice to see that the AirAmericans can be just as vile and loathesome and braindead as the Limbaughs.
And I, for one, have yet to meet anyone who DOESN’T have clear reasons for not supporting HC. Mostly it boils down to one or more of
(a) lying (about her record, her history, and other candidates)
(b) a scorched-earth approach to winning at any cost
(c) Bill (i.e., been-there-done-that, or the bull-in-a-china-shop out of control thing)
(d) electability (the repubs are salivating at the prospect of a hillary candidacy–if mccain can’t mobilize the base, SHE certainly can)
(e) specific policy positions
If Hillary’s voters are intent on either staying home or voting republican in November if she doesn’t get the nomination, then they are fools and self-destructive (same goes for Obama’s folks too).
todd
Workplace Religious Freedom Act: Flag buring Amendment: WHORE!!!
Steve
The fact that Randi came out and said this actually gives Geraldine’s words validity. First and foremost, I do not believe that Geraldine was saying that he is lucky to be a black man, or that he is where he is because he is a black man. She was saying that in this presidential race he most certainly is luck to be the black man as opposed to the white woman. And honestly, I don’t understand how anyone can dispute that. The media can come out and say anything they want against a woman and it is for the most part tolerated.
No one would come out and call Obama a f–cking anything, for the fear of being labeled a racist far outweighs the fear of being labeled a sexist. It will be interesting to see if like Don Imus she will be fired…if not I think it actually gives more weight to Ferraro’s point.
Afroguapo
+1 EMB, I will take either one of them over McCain as too much is at stake. +2 Bill Perdue re: “She’s Bush Stout, he’s Bush Lite. With Democrats like these who needs Republicans.” It sort of echoes Molly Ivin’s sentiments — check the previous article. On another political/cultural website I frequent, people are talking about how the sky is falling if Obama is elected because he’s supposedly a socialist and I’m am baffled as to what the hell people are talking about. Yes, Steve, exactly, “No one would come out and call Obama a f–cking anything, for the fear of being labeled a racist far outweighs the fear of being labeled a sexist” People can’t be as transparent or frank in their racism as they can their sexism. If they were, they would be perceived to be monsters like Paul G who was excoriated by some for making the “s**c” and taco bell comments. So instead, the language is modified and people have learned to talk in code to convey points to other people. I, along with all of my other professional black and Latino friends, experience it all the time. And perhaps I am naive but I don’t know if it’s so much as sexism that is holding Hillary back as much as she (in my personal observations) can be somewhat polarizing/alienating and not as warm/personable as BHO and at times appear fake. And then there’s all the previous baggage.
emb
Todd– Yeah, I forgot about those votes. Add ’em to the Iraq Free Pass she gave W, plus NAFTA and DOMA, a healthcare process shrouded in secrecy, and I don’t think “progressive leader” is the term that comes to mind.
Afroguapo
Co-sign EMB and Todd. She is not a progressive but speaks the same populist feel good rhetoric.
Steve, wanted to send this to you personally but since I don’t have your email, check this out.
From Jack & Jill Politics.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Women, White Privilege, And The Bradley Effect
The talk of gender bias and sexism from Gloria Steinem and Anne Applebaum yesterday was entirely absent an acknowledgement of white privilege, which I intend to discuss in some more depth here. But suffice it to say that white women in New Hampshire broke for Clinton in large numbers.
Clinton: 46% women
Obama: 34% women
Edwards: 15% women
Clinton: 29% men
Obama: 40% men
Edwards: 19% men
What is fascinating about Applebaum and Steinem is that they both had little problem crediting Obama’s blackness with his victory. We would never do this with another candidate; no one would ever argue that McCain is “whiter” than Mitt Romney and that’s why he won. Likewise, neither of these women would argue that being a white woman is an advantage, despite the fact that white women make up a majority of the population, and can influence an election in any state in the union. This is similar to the way white women remain absent from dicussions on affirmative action although they are it’s greatest beneficiaries.
The pre-election polls put Obama way ahead of Clinton. But a secret ballot is not a caucus; the open process in Iowa may have kept white voters consistent with what they were telling pollsters. Once in the voting booth, they changed their minds. This is called the Bradley Effect, and it’s been seen over and over again.
Matthew Yglesias at the Atlantic argues that this was not the case last night.
I should say we’re seeing some talk of a “Wilder effect” possibly doing Obama in. I don’t buy that. If you look at the breakdown of the results, you’d need to believe that white women, but not white men, are inclined to lie to pollsters about that. More likely we’re looking at a combination of gender backlash, plus the fact that Obama was so widely perceived as likely to win led independents to vote for John McCain in the GOP primary.
I think it’s mostly self-serving for liberals to argue that there was no Bradley or Wilder Effect here. The pre-polling in Iowa was significantly more accurate, and it was followed by a weeklong fiesta of interracial and bipartisan backslapping over how “far” Americans have come in dealing with racism. Everyone (including me) made themselves feel very good about what happened in Iowa without thinking critically about how the format itself might have prevented a Bradley Effect like occurrence. More importantly, while a “gender backlash,” as Yglesias put it can happen anywhere in America, there are only certain states where a similar reaction by black folks can change an election.
One of the variables in New Hampshire was the secret ballot. What influence this may or may not have will be seen if and when the phenomenon repeats itself, but the simplest explanation is usually the correct one: White folks said they were going to vote for Obama when they weren’t.
Yesterday in discussing Steinem’s Op-Ed I briefly outlined some of the effects of white privilege for white women.
Meanwhile, there are 16 women serving in the Senate, all of them white. There have been three black senators since Reconstruction, one of them was a black woman. There is a grand total of ONE serving in the Senate now. White women still earn more money than both black men and black women, and despite the fact that white women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action the entire public discourse on the subject centers around race.
[…]
At the same time, it is entirely acceptable to express sexist sentiments directly (like calling Hillary Clinton a “bitch”) while racist attacks on Obama take on poorly veiled (but veiled nonetheless) forms. The reason is because the way racism and sexism work in American society is fundamentally different, not because one is “worse” than the other.
It is a simple fact that when Applebaum and Steinem say “women” they mean white women. When they don’t mean white women they say black women. Black women remain largely absent from the equation of white feminism unless the target of criticism is black, such as a Hip-hop artist. Under such circumstances, white feminists are often content to employ a black female voice so that they cannot be accused of being “racist” for their criticism. The interest in including black women usually wanes soon after.
I do not restrict this criticism to white women, or white feminists. The use of black voices as political props goes across both genders and political parties. While Republicans are somewhat more “honest” about expressing their prejudices, they largely can’t be reasoned with in terms of establishing that racism is still an issue in this country. Liberals are comfortable only when the discussion is about how uncomfortable Republicans are with race. When it comes to confronting their own prejudices, most aren’t as sanguine.
But one of the most important of these advantages is access to power. In terms of electoral politics, white women have a privilege no black person, male or female, will ever have. The GOP functions as a party entirely without the black vote because they don’t need it. The same cannot be said of white women voters. An election can turn on their vote in any state in the Union, but the black vote is only significant enough to do so in certain states.
But discussing sexism without acknowledging white privilege, saying “women” when what you mean is white women, is fundamentally dishonest. It allows people like Applebaum and Steinem to minimize their access to power, which by any objective measure is greater than that of black Americans of either gender. This is not to say that sexism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t place significant obstacles or social double standards in the path of someone like Hillary Clinton; but the reality is that such essentially race neutral discussions about sexism minimize the fact that while Clinton may be a woman, she is still white. There is no Bradley Effect for someone like her.
Suffice it to say that this election will be about race from this point on in a way it hasn’t before. As anxious as I am about what that conversation is going to sound like, in the end it’s for the best.
Steve
Afro,
I honestly do believe you are being naive. I believe that everyone is being naive if they think for one moment that gender does not hold women back and in particular HRC. The fact that you recognize that people can be transparent in their sexism completely validates my point. The fact that you are saying that racists are portrayed as monsters, while the fact that sexists are glossed over speaks to the point.
Not claiming that racism isn’t alive and well, but just commenting on the fact that in a race between a woman and a black man, Ferraro hit the nail on the head. It is tougher to be a woman, because not only do you have to deal with the subtle code speak that you point out, but you also have to deal with the straight shooting sexism that most see no problems with.
Steve
“The reason is because the way racism and sexism work in American society is fundamentally different, not because one is “worse†than the other.”
“…but the reality is that such essentially race neutral discussions about sexism minimize the fact that while Clinton may be a woman, she is still white.”
Kinda conflicting statements, the article is all about prioritizing the -isms. This to me is a real issue. There are many groups in America that are maginalized, that do not have the same power as the straight white male. And for whatever reason each group is so concerned about getting what is theirs that they always look past the fact that if they all joined forces and quit prioritizing who has it worse then change could come a lot faster.
rickroberts
Can the campaign just end now? I am sick of it. Whores, bitches, niggers. Hello, President McCain.
Afroguapo
Steve, yes, we should join forces rather than fighting over crumbles of the cookie. Please point that out to some of the guys on this site who are so hellbent on voting for McCain if Obama gets the nomination because they think Hillary is our savior/gay ally and that Wright is a homophobe or Barack the Anti-Christ. There was a guy on this very site who posted a link to an anti-gay church telling people it was the United Church of Christ when it wasn’t. I honestly think this rhetoric is coming from gay white men who are so consumed with their sexual orientation that they can’t see or don’t want to see the bigger picture or other views. EMB said it best when he (assuming he’s a guy) said “If Hillary’s voters are intent on either staying home or voting republican in November if she doesn’t get the nomination, then they are fools and self-destructive (same goes for Obama’s folks too).”
I honestly didn’t interpret the article as being conflicting and drew clear distinctions. Racism and sexism are abhorrent (I condone neither) but they do function/operate differently. We can categorically refute sexism but also acknowledge that there are other layers that can influence/intersect gender and how it plays out (white privilege — that is just historical fact and present day reality). Just by anecdote, in the doorman hi-rise building in which I used to live, white women in the morning would leave the building in droves going to jobs as lawyers, investment bankers, management consultants, editors while simultaneously, black Caribbean woman would arrive to take care of their children and Latino women to clean their apartments. Sexism in all of its manifestations against Hillary is wrong and we should call people out on their sexist behavior but we don’t have to gloss over historical realities that have modern day implications.
Brian
I’d like all Obama supporters to think about something for a second. One of his major themes is that he is running a campaign that is different from all the others currently and in the recent past, focusing on the positives and not the negatives. And that is one of the reasons why I support him for president. I think Obama supporters should follow his example and stop the name-calling and the gutter politics that has been so prevalent in particular the past six weeks or so. We don’t need to be calling anyone a whore or a monster. Does Barack Obama approve of it? I doubt it.
Steve
Afro,
I am definitely a strong supporter of Clinton, and believe that she is the stronger of the candidates. That said, if Obama gets the nomination I will rally behind him. I do not like everything that he stands for, but recognize between McCain and Obama I would rather have Obama leading my country. And if/when the time comes I will be a very vocal member of the Obama campaign.
I also can appreciate the many layers within each group that is marginalized, and can appreciate the complexity of sexism. But again, going back to Ferraro’s point, Obama is lucky that he is the black man in a race between a white woman and a black man. In this race, we can’t just talk about just sexism. Although sexist attacks are being made against HRC, because she is up against a black man, the discussion quickly turns to how fortunate she is to be a white woman. That somehow because she is white she should not complain about the sexist comments, and the inequality between the genders, because women of color have it worse. It is a very divisive tactic that is not coming from the Clinton campaign and it does bother me. It bothers me that we can’t just talk about the sexism that white woman face when we are talking about Hillary.
I can not speak to what life in America is like for a person of color, nor a woman, and surely would have my ass handed to me if I said I could(and rightfully so). However, I am equally annoyed when people pretend to understand what it is like to be a white person within a marginalized group. I am annoyed when people talk about white privilege(which I believe exists and is a problem) as though somehow that negates any claim we have to being marginalized and oppressed. That somehow because there are people who have it worse we have no right to complain. This is the problem that Hillary faces in this race, this is the point that Ferraro was making.
M Shane
I have a prety liberal tolerance for expression, and I had a fair opinion of Ferraro, untill I heard what she said about Obama: my immediate thought was that she must be mentally ill to utter such an unambiguously bigoted statement.
Besides, and I hear it with some frequency, and it seems to go unchallenged, as bizzarre and false as it is” that it is harder for a woman to get elected in America than a man, black or not. I don’t know where you all live, but where I come from (America) women have high paying, proficient jobs: more than thier husbands; they very frequently hold public office and are popular authors and high ranking intellectuals.I don’t see this to be the case with black men at all to the same equivalency. There are more balck men in jail than any other group(if that counts for prestige). Most prejudicial jokes (4-1) in the Media are against men. Even total female idiots are elected Sally Kern is just one of many.
Clearly, Obama is in his position despite his being black, if anything. He has more than once faced front on, issues that would undo almost anyone in asserting who he is and what he believes in despite the position of black churches. He honestly makes his way through difficult impasses. People resent that he doesn’t he doesn’t mince his words, and that he is idealistic and has the ability to inspire. I want much much more of a retraction of the republican perversion of our economy.
Randi Rhodes referal was unnecessarily combatative and not even relivant. Randi is smart but gets very carried away.
Ms. Clinton’s bossy (like Bill) insistence that a renown scholar ,Samantha Powers, be fired for what was clearly a harmless overstatement has to do mostly with her knife in the back at Powers for having brought the publics attention to the Clinton Administration’s INTENTIONAL inaction in the RWANDA GENOCIDE in which they knowingly allowed 800,000 people be massacred in one of the greatest genocides of this last century.
In an article that she wrote she bitch slapped Powers by saying that Powers “looked like” the loch-ness monster(suppying pictures)
“whore” is a funny name, admittedly. Randi could have thought of better ones.
Steve
M Shane,
Just curious, where is the proof in your statement: “I don’t know where you all live, but where I come from (America) women have high paying, proficient jobs: more than thier husbands; they very frequently hold public office and are popular authors and high ranking intellectuals.” Especially, the “more than their husbands part”…I completely call BS.
Also the Loch Ness monster thing, you do realize that the post you are talking about was from a fake Clinton blog.
http://www.newsgroper.com/hillary-clinton
Afroguapo
Steve:
I honestly appreciate your balanced response and not becoming shrill. I understand your point that some white people (even affluent ones like Hillary or gay professional gay white men for that matter) may feel effectively “silenced” by virtue of their status in society or that it somehow negates whatever outsider or devalued status they may feel. I guess though, my being the ever cynic due to past experiences and seeing this up close and personal (high school in particular and in the professional workspace), I just doubt the veracity of Ferraro and Hillary. Ferraro is of a certain age, era and geography (Queens) and I can’t chalk her words up to being authentic in highlighting sexism (perhaps she chose a poor choice of words — being called “lucky” is a loaded expression for many middle to upper middle class professional blacks) in constrast to you seeming genuine. Moreover, Hillary had her epiphany in finding her “voice” while at the same time she has resorted to the same race baiting as her husband (who is no stranger to this practice, Lani Guinier, Sista Souljah) in fostering dissension or appeasing white voters. It’s politics plain and simple, I realize. The most authentic candidate of the Dems and with the most integrity I think (Kucinich) would never have stood a chance because it requires this type of manipulation to make it. I will say this, however, Barack and Michelle seemingly haven’t played the gender card (yes, some of his staff/camp has) the way Hillary and Bill have played the race card. Have a good weekend Steve!!
Afroguapo
I thought you’d appreciate this Steve.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Identity Trap
By DAVID BROOKS
Correction appended.
When Hillary Clinton is good on the Sunday talk shows, she is really, really good. But when she is bad, she’s atrocious. When she talks about policy, she will dazzle you. When her own ambitions are on the line, it’s time to reach for the sick bag.
On “Meet the Press†Sunday, it was the latter. Clinton refused to admit any real errors. She implied that Barack Obama is unfit to be president, without ever honestly taking responsibility for what she actually believes.
She broadcast her own humility: “You know, I’m very other-directed. I don’t like talking about myself.†She also described the central role she plays in the lives of all living creatures in the universe: “The Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say.â€
But Clinton’s real problem is that she is caught in a trap, which you might call The Identity Trap.
Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.
Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.
All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde.
All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affirmative action, like Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff Sommers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-runners.
Clinton is suffering most. She is now accused, absurdly, of being insensitive to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Bill Clinton’s talk of a “fairy tale,†which was used in the context of the Iraq debate, is now being distorted into a condemnation of the civil rights movement. Hillary Clinton finds that in attacking Obama, she is accused of being hostile to the entire African-American experience.
Clinton’s fallback position is that neither she nor Obama should be judged as representatives of their out-groups. They should be judged as individuals.
But the entire theory of identity politics was that we are not mere individuals. We carry the perspectives of our group consciousness. Our social roles and loyalties are defined by race and gender. It’s a black or female thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Even in this moment of stress, Clinton wants to have it both ways. She wants to be emblematic of her gender and liberated from race and gender politics. As she told Tim Russert on Sunday: “You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don’t think either of us wants to inject race or gender in this campaign. We’re running as individuals.â€
Huh?
What we have here is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel: the bonfire of the multicultural vanities. The Clintons are hitting Obama with everything they’ve got. The Obama subordinates are twisting every critique into a racial outrage in an effort to make all criticism morally off-limits. Obama’s campaign drew up a memo delineating all of the Clintons’ supposed racial outrages. Bill Clinton is frantically touring black radio stations to repair any wounds.
Meanwhile, Clinton friend Robert Johnson, a one-man gaffe machine, reminds us of Obama’s drug use and accuses him of being like Sidney Poitier in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.†Another Clinton supporter, Gloria Steinem, notes that black men were given the vote a half-century before women.
This is the logical extreme of the identity politics that as been floating around this country for decades. Every revolution devours its offspring, and it seems the multicultural one does, too.
The final two points I’d make are: First, this whole show seems stale and deranged to the younger set, as Obama and Clinton seemed to recognize when they damped down the feud yesterday afternoon. The interesting split is not between the feminist and civil rights Old Bulls, it’s between the establishments of both movements, who emphasize top-down change, and the younger dissenters, who don’t. Second, this dispute is going to be settled by the rising, and so far ignored, minority group. For all the current fighting, it’ll be Latinos who end up determining who gets the nomination.
At last, a bridge to the 21st century.
M Shane
Steve: Whilee i havn’t lived here most of my life In Minnesota my Us and State senator and House rep are women . Women are in many managerial possitions in most all businesses. I encounter numerous couples who decide that the man will stay home and take care of kids because he makes less. The Orchestra here has many women (1/2 anyway). Many attorneys and about 1/2 of the Judges are women. A friend of mine started at about $100,000 from law school.
I have seen statistics of where women own more assets in the country than men.
In America, women can go almost anywhere that they want if they want to. You have to keep in mind that many women would still rather sit at home and be taken care of-that is just a reality. Women want the rights that men do just in case but they want to default to the man carrying the burden. You have to try being straight to understand that phenomenon.
I would like to see statistics to the contrary. I ‘m not aware of studies that verify your claim.or more specifically, the claim that it is easier for a black man than a woman of any color: that’s absurd. Even my white women friends in higher positions claim that there is a distinct “glass ceiling “for black men that does not apply to them. I have to admit that this is probably the biggest middle class state in the union. It is also the case that women take so much time off raising kids that unless they forego that they cannot truly compete with a man, any more than a man who gets sick an equivalent amount of timecan compete fairly. That’s just reality. There are large businesses which are so female dominated that they only hire men here and there to avoid suits.
In any case, Ferarro’s statement was exceedingly ignorant and bigoted.
You are right, I perused that sight when the “scandal ” broke.
I’ve been trying to locate it, I thought that it was an article. Sorry. This is an example of information age ignorance, and why I read books a lot. We get from a computer somthing like the output of a firehose in the face and have no good way of being selective.
Steve
M Shane,
Firstly, I did not claim that it was easier for black men or black women to achieve success in this country than white women. My point was that in this presidential election, I believe that it is easier to be the black male candidate than the white female candidate. In this race you can overtly and subvertly attack a woman all you want and no one will scream sexism, however, you attack a black male and one of the first responses is racism. The fact that you quickly revert the discussion back to comparing how much more difficult it is for black people than white women completely demonstrates my point.
As far as gender differences in the workplace, women are still earning about 77 cents to every man’s dollar(and right out of school typically are paid 80% of what a male is), and will have to track down the information, but remember reading that the salary gap is the largest between white men and white women. Of the Fortune 500 companies, only 12 are run by women. Overall in large firms, women make up about 2.5% of the highest paying executives and make about 45% less than the men. Of the 100 senators, only 16 are women. Of the 435 representatives, only 74 are women. There are definitely some fields(certain fields in academics and veterinary medicine for example) in which women are ahead but by and large they are few and far between, and usually on the lower economic end.
Also, of the couples where one parent stays home to raise the children, in 2006 there were 143,000 stay at home dads as compared to 5.6 million stay at home moms. I am sure that there are more dads now, but they come no where near as close to the women who stay at home. And this number is primarily due to the fact that men earn more.
And in our society by and large it is the women who are expected to care for the children, they are 2x as likely to have to miss work because of family issues than the male. This really has an impact on the hiring of women, and the career growth of women.
And no where have I ever heard that women hold more assets than men, quite the opposite actually. They will need to have more money than men because they live a lot longer than us, but typically they are not so successful at doing so and many older women are living at the poverty level.
I will never make a claim that it is easier for non white people to have success in this country for I do not believe that.
Your claim that women want to be taken care by default is unbelieveably sexist. And again the fact that you would say that is indicative of the innate sexism in our society.