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I think I'm starting to understand Geraldine
This certainly won't be my most intelligent post, but all looped up on cold medicine the fact that there's a lot of race in this race suddenly makes sense. Geraldine makes racist comments, then accuses the Obama campaign of making her out to be a racist and making the race about race.
Nobody can find any comments from Obama, other than him saying that he doesn't believe she's a racist.
Geraldine is an old lady now. She's not hip to the internet and grass roots support. She's got a distorted view of race and society because it's all so modern to her. She thinks that freelance supporters represent Obama's campaign, because back in her day, that's how things worked.
She's not a racist. She's old and out of touch.
Comments (4)
You may be on to something. Although I wonder what she'd take more offense to: being called a racist or being called "old and out of touch."
But this seems like a fair, less knee-jerk reaction to her rantings. Certainly, it's nicer than "menopausal" which I saw floated on Huff-Po comments.
March 14, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The vibe I got from Ferraro is that she is still extremely bitter about the 1984 results. According to her, she and others put a lot of effort into building an extensive platform, only to be soundly trounced in the election by a smooth-talking empty suit.
It isn't that difficult to see how she pictures the 2008 race shaping up, and why she doesn't like to see Clinton being edged out by Obama, who has openly praised the man who defeated her and whose supporters openly gloat about finally having someone like him on the Democratic side.
I think Ferraro just started to see Obama and Reagan blend together and she finally just lashed out at him. Her actual comments don't make a lot of sense, but there was some genuine emotion behind them.
March 14, 2008 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with this post. She said that the country was "...caught up in the concept" of Obama's candidacy.
That's what this is to her--a concept. For white people of her age, a black prez is just that--a concept, an idea, a mirage. But the mirage is about to become very real and it's materialization threatens her candidate of choice. So she lashes out.
March 14, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
She also has an incurable blood cancer, multiple myeloma. For those reasons, I'm perfectly willing to give her some slack.
That doesn't excuse Hillary from not as quickly and kindly as possible shutting her up.
March 14, 2008 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
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