There is a widespread belief  among Hillary followers that Hillary’s imminent loss of the nomination is  an expression of anti-feminism somewhere ,  anti-womanism, anti-‘our girl’ism,  misogyny, sexist thinking  (or sexism somehow). This is view is, I am sorry to say a signature of  this particular group.  If Hillary were struck by lightning the same people would be out with the same message. Obamaism’s sexism was the cause, direct or indirect, overt or subtle. Aided, of course, by the media’s sexism. And, of course, the weather  bureau’s well known arrant sexism.  (Remember when hurricanes were only called after women?)  The big bad bogeyman (there I’ve done it myself) somehow would be, have something to do with,  sexism.  And anyone who casts doubt on that is, by that very act, a confirmed sexist. Anyone who, as in John Jay’s treaty, doesn’t put a candle in his or her window and sit up all night calling out the window that it is sexist, is a sexist.

Getting to call things sexist is that movement’s equivalent of the rapture. Geraldine Ferraro, one of their inspirational thinkers, having failed to offer any credible rationales  for why Obama wouldn’t be where he was were he not black, fell back on the old standby that has never failed yet and where she knew she would get support,  Obama would never be where he was is he weren’t such a sexist. It broke her heart to see such sexism. It was an outrage that would reverberate  round the earth, the extent of the  sexism shown in this campaign by Obama, those who support Obama, those who sometimes say his name  on the media, those who bring sandwiches to the hotel room, those who get drunk and passing  nearby in  convertibles, those who sit on the nearby beach and swat at flies. When asked to identify some concrete example of sexism, Geraldine, who had had time to be tutored and so say something coherent, referred to an episode (the episode)  in  New England (Boston) where someone held a sign that said Wash My Shirt . (Or was it that they called it out?)  And the media, did, did not, focus proper attention/in attention on this.  Proof of a vast sexist conspiracy if I ever heard it. I have heard anti sexist point to the media’s very focus on this episode as sexist, and to the media’s very lack of focus on this episode as sexist. Pressed further Geraldine cited the time, after the Philadelphia debate, Obama brushed lint off his shoulder and got a huge roar from his young crowd.  The oracular Geraldine who was not evidently into rap music and one of the three people in hearing who never heard of the Jaz-Z (?)  considered this  a definite example of sexism. Obama, you see, must have been referring to Hillary as lint, and brushing lint was, you see,  trivializing Hillary, you see, who is not easy to trivialize, and trivializing a female for any reason is  sexist.

What did not occur to Geraldine then, and very probably has not occurred to her since, is that there was something going on here she might not be getting. That  has not occurred to any of her  fellow deplorers.   I have read maybe half a dozen articles, leaders by women a lot more articulate than Geraldine, all scandalized at  the shocking, dismaying, disappointing, overt, sly, bald-faced, deeply inbred...what other reason could there possibly be for  Hillary to come up short... she said so herself...misogyny displayed by Obama, by Obama’s campaign, by Obamna’s supporters, by totally anonymous onlookers,  by anyone who in any way opposed Hillary, or by those who even reported on Hillary. But none of authors  I read yet ever pointed to a single specific instance other than the Geraldine pair.  I suppose asking people even to cite instances of sexism is itself sexist because that suggests that you do not take some at their word which means to have a trivializing attitude.

 

And what they miss could hardly be more obvious or writ in letters more large.  The outcome of this campaign has nothing whatever to do with sexism.  And if you don’t see that,  of you can’t see that right out,  then you need a political seeing eye-dog.  You will not get larger letters in a lifetime. There is only one item. Not two or three items to confuse those  unprepared to read complex signs. One 1 one 1.

 

Hillary was leading everybody by some 20 points. (I, of course, am not tricked into thinking sexism was not at work because, were if not for below the surface sexism, the margin might have been 30 points.) Anyway there was Hillary 20 points ahead of Obama. Where she had been for donkey’s years. It looked like it would gone on forever. She and I (sexist that I am) thought she was the inevitable nominee.  (I am a 4 time Clinton voter so did not see that as catastrophic.)  Then, in the course of one dramatic month, without anyone changing sex, or awareness of sex,  she went from 20 points ahead, to some number behind. Swings do not get  much more dramatic. December 2007.  Look it up. The record is all over the Internet. You would think analyst would at least try and explain this effect.

 

What happened in that extraordinary month? What could it be that the Geraldines are totally incapable of grasping?  It could be summarized many ways. I summarize is as “the coming of the kids.”  A whole new generation hopped over the wall.  The interactive generation  you might call it, who had not been raised to sit in rooms and watch electronic images. They had been raised to interact with electronic images. Interact. Interact. It formalte new nerve patterns and new responses.   This was the UTube, MySpace, PageBook generation.  This started to happen in the last election with John Dean and Kerry but it petered out. Maybe they did nol know how to ride the tiger. Maybe it was not mature enough.

 

Now in this group, all those demographic categorizations so vital to the elders, whether some one is male or female, white or black, are simply, amazingly, extraordinarily...try and prepare yourself for this...unimportant.  That was the extraordinary message. There were enough people in this group, maybe to make a country. OUR country. NOT sexist. NOT racist.  And the fact that this group started to form for Dean 4 years ago, who was not black, and did not have  a female opponent indicates it is something not inherent in Obama;s blackness or masculinity. Could there be something deeper here  than sexism and racism?

 

The Iowa caucus, for me, was truly one of the extraordinary events of a lifetime. It meant blacks and women had become citizens, or were about to become citizens,  in the full sense perhaps for the first time.  Here was a group in which attitudes do not follow  demographic category with the certainty they do in older groups.  Someone or something has taught these young people  differently. Obama, who as considered by many onlookers as ‘not black enough’,  became a true representative of the black community virtually overnight.   Notice, by the way, your sexist theorizers, this include black women as well.

 

Maybe what the Geraldine Ferraros ought to be complaining about is that the poor sisters of this new group I am calling youth  have been duped into thinking about other things than the old tired labels. Heavens. How disgraceful. And what Obama is, what Dean started to be, is first and foremost a tiger rider extraordinaire. He understood it very  early on.  (I did not grasp it until Iowa.)  He designed a masterful campaign to capitalize on it.  He has brought off, in addition  to seeing the world as it is, and not was, has managed a true long-shot with extraordinary skill.

 

How can anyone look back and not be amazed?

 

In the many Hillary moments that got such broad media coverage (I can think of no comparable Obama moments that got the same media play) Hillary is shown mocking  her opponent,  raising her hands and talking about the heavens will be parting for the forces that will come down to solve the problems, she, the problem solver,  not the talker, knew how to solve.  And I thought watching it, darn if she hasn’t  missed the whole thing, as have all the “sexism” deplorers.  The help Obama was summoning was not going to come from clouds  but from the audience.

 

In short, in the purest and starkest terms, what we are seeing is a passing of the torch to a group who  simply does not think like Geraldine Ferraro. At its heart is not sexism but the pure heady antithesis of sexism.  And of course, as one would expect, the  elders see this as  sexism “of the worst kind.” 

5/21/08

 

Two  points about the Democratic primary. Full disclosure:  I  switched from Dodd to Obama, and have voted 4 times for the Clintons, though I am a registered Republican.  I think, with the possible exception of tort reform, and aid to Africa,  the Bush administration has been wrong on everything.

 

1) For the last several months the Democratic party should have had one overriding concern: given the fervor of  each candidate’s  support base, blacks in the case of Obama, white women, especially over 50,   in the case of  Clinton,  and that is, how to mollify the supporters of the loser...if Clinton, wins how to pacify the black voters and get them to transfer support  to another nominee  with minimum loss...if Obama wins, how to placate Clinton’s equivalent cadre etc. This is inherent in a campaign that has aroused such intensity and enthusiasm.  I would think, in fact,  for anyone  those thinks the change of regime is essential,   this would be the issue: the real and  deeply disturbing shadow of schism.  Assurances that everyone will pull  together  after, are certainly baseless, given the unique nature of this campaign, and probably disingenuous.

It seems obvious the best chance, and maybe the only real chance,  to achieve this is to convince  the disappointed supporters that the decision process was fair and open. If the black community, for instance can see that their guy lost fair and square,  though they will be sorely disappointed, they will be less inclined to rage (not disinclined but less inclined) and  long term alienation.  But it must be abundantly clear that they have not been ‘cheated.’  Not less for Hillary’s support group. Otherwise  we are opening Pandora’s box. Bitterness leads to action which breeds more bitterness.

I do not see how anyone of whatever persuasion and with even reasonable intelligence can seriously question the above.  Given the intensity of competition, it is of utmost importance  to make process credible, and to avoid needless offense.

Given this,  what Hillary is now doing is absolutely lethal. She has switched her fire from Obama and focused it on  the process.  The pity here is that the damage she might do attacking  Obama is more easily mended   than the harm she does in undermining her  group’s faith in the  process itself.  In attacking the process, she is potentially costing the Democrats an amount that is impossible to estimate.  (How to you get back people who have lost faith in the process?)  Its ruinous potential is difficult to overstate. 
Frankly I cannot  see how Hillary  does not know this.  In fact I think both understanding of it  and deriving gratification from it (imagine Obama losing in November and Hillary reading that he only got 1% of the white women over  50 vote)  is what I now consider to be the  essential Hillary, the Hillary  I have come to know in this campaign. It is one more case of her perfect willingness to poison the village well.

 

2) I don’t think that asking people whether race affected their votes  on exit polls provides an accurate picture of how they really react to race.  If 2 out of 10 people admit in an exit poll, that race ‘was a consideration’  we may intuit that those who used race as a disqualifier is some higher , but how much higher?

Actually I think there may be a good proxy.  Another question on exit interviews was whether the respondent thought Obama shared Wright’s views, and of course that refers to credos a la UTube. As far as I can see it would be difficult to find  anyone more quintessentially opposed to Wright’s paranoid and vengeful outlook than Obama. If you wanted, starting from scratch, to make up someone who was the antithesis of Wright, you would come pretty close to Obama. (An irony I admit.) But an amazing 53%  of Kentucky respondents, with no evidence whatever,  thought the two shared views, the sound bite cuews.  to an appreciable extent.  For argument’s sake, and though the cases are not exactly comparable, McCain  not being parishioner but there being  no support issue between Obama and Wright,  you could ask respondents how many thought McCain shares Hagee’s views to an appreciable extent. You could take the McCain-Hagee figure as a  proxy for native  propensity to assigning guilt by association,  subtract that from the Obama-Wright score, and get a the better measure of   degree to which “race was a factor.”

The Obama-Wright score was 53%. Adjusting for the fact that fewer have heard of Hagee, i.e. supposing they did know, the McCain-Hagee score might be 15%.  (Pure guess.) If that is correct it suggests that 40% of Appalachia won’t vote for O’Bama because of race. Now that is more like the America of  my boyhood.  (I am 77 and raised in upscale New Jersey)   Let’s now suppose 3% of blacks  are positively motivated by  Obama’s blackness, given the low black population in Kentucky.  So out of 100 voters, Hillary starts with 40 predetermined voters and Obama starts with 3.  Obama would have to win about  82.5% of the open voters (100-40-3) to break even.

If this analysis is remotely correct, Onama has to work a near miracle to convert Appalachia and Reverend Wright has provided some value after all.

 

Clinton is in a fever to persuade the gullible media that something  that the Bill component of the incarnation Clinton has said on multiple occasions, in effect, remarking on the relationship between people’s circumstance and their attitudes, as in  “white people scared to death”  is   condescending. 

         A statement to that effect, maybe using the term “elitist”,  has become a staple of the Hillary component’s stump speech.

         What Obama’s remarks seem to amount to, drained of   local emotional content,  is pointing out that  people are especially  conservative in  economically hard times.

Isn’t that what he said? Or isn’t it a specific instantiation of that general thought?  Gods and guns standing for conservatism.  “Bitter” standing for pissed off. Or have I missed something?

         It was a remark of the general class of  “there are no atheists in “foxholes” which was first advanced as an argument for God,  i.e. in a foxhole you will be close to the elemental and know the eternal verities, and then advanced by atheists as a statement against God. Either way it was a statement that points that that there is, in fact,  a relationship between your circumstances and your thoughts of and attitude about God. (Would I get nailed for being  irreligious I wonder?  Better check my St. Augestine or  St. Paul or ho all the way to jesus.)

         In taking that line,  the Clintons are like are two people whose balloon arrived in Oz a few day before yours, and who are  pointing out that you can’t talk “that way” about Munchkins.  (Or if put in the true spirit of this brouhaha  that “happen to be” Munchkins, or, in full  Clinton speak,  “the wonderful upbeat, patriotic and hardworking people who, through no fault of their own,  happen to be Munchkins.”) If you talk about the Munchkins the wrong way, they will let you know, you will be judged  elitist. You don’t say that the size of thing “dwarfs”  another for example.  You certainly don’t accuse anyone of being  “small minded.”

         Now I would certainly admit that what Obama said was “indelicate” . Maybe even insensitive. Certainly ill considered given this is a political campaign.

But condescending? I  thought the word   “condescend”  means “to behave toward other people as though less important or less intelligent than you are.”  (The Microsoft definition, which knows a thing or two about condescending.)

Given that, I would think it is not Obama but the Clinton who have been condescending.

         Try an keep the idea of “behave toward other people as though they are less intelligent”  in mind as we wander through this building here just inside the gates of Clintonia.

First of all, I assert the very claim that Obama was condescending, is condescending.  They assume you are not smart enough to figure out what it means.

         Let’s pause now at the  tableau just inside the entrance of this first building. There she is, in effigy, the 30 year liberal (not counting her  college days when she was conservative) depicted talking about her duck hunting idylls in the Scranton uplands.  And her love of guns.  (Good Munchkins, you know, all like guns.) It is only by the sheerest mischance that she hasn’t joined the NRA. Or gone out to the blinds with Dick Cheney.

In the next one she is drinking beer in a bar for the TV crew. Watching her you think maybe she even has a Munchkin dress being saving for the grand finale, which will prove she REALLY gets what being 3 foot six  is like.

You don’t find that  condescending ? If not, what do you find that. Maybe we ought to startwondering about the word “phoney” insteas of “elitist.”

And as though the Munchkin had no other properties.

The problem with Obama was he was being Obama and speaking of them as peers. The condescension  was not in the words themselves but in the views of the commentators who thought a certain delicacy was required..

         And no-one, well almost no-one, was struck by the incongruity.

With her affluent childhood, and her full tuition stint at Wellsley, and her post-college bee-line  for the board room,  and her line of chatter about all the important people she knows, there she is,  standing  at the deck of the A deck of the cruise ship, with her Tiffany jewels, her alligator checkbook,  and her Munchkin phrase book (do not use the word ‘dwarf”)  looking at the quaint natives across the lagoon  (Munchkins if you don’t want to mix metaphors) talking about how she learned to harpoon herself as a girl and pointing out someone born on that island and who  returned to that island by choice, whose constituency has always been that island,  is an “elitist.”

I figure she must Obama’s background so she must assume that her audience doesn’t. Or the media is too cowed by  assertions of double standard to react

The building of course, whose wonders we have barely scratched,  is  the Bill and Hillary Museum to Condescension. I can tell you one thing. If I were a Munchkin on the beach I would be pretty bitter, harpooning being the way its been lately.

I have been shopping around for a new fairy story. See of you like this one.

 

Once upon a time, a beautiful Princess  was trying to become the nominee of one of the major parties of her kingdom  and so become Emperor.  One day she announced  that only someone  who had a bauble collection like hers was qualified to be Emperor (especially in these troubled times).  When someone in the press  asked  just what she  had in the way of baubles,  there was at first an awkward pause on the conference call and then announcement of  full disclosure soon. (Full disclosure from the Princess, who billed herself as Princess-nothing-to-hide,  was going to be a rarity in itself so interest was already high)  After what neighbors said sounded like a frantic night at the Princess’ headquarters, of hammering and sawing, an impressive box covered with official looking reproductions of Palace stationary,  and miscellaneous foreign hotel bills was trundled round to the press room and set among flags and flowers. First there were speeches about not giving speeches, then some folk dancing,  followed by a band of  latinos without papers playing Hail to the Candidate.  It was casual, amiable,  and folksy,  but it was made clear this was serious stuff and what would be revealed would be self explanatory and dispositive. 

There was a glitch of course which occurs, even in fairy stories, after the words self explanatory and  dispositive.  The latch would not open.  But workmen  were summoned to pry it open. The suspense had become tremendous.  Any moment now people would see  something rarely seen:  definitive credentials distinguishing  those qualified to answer the phone at 3:00 AM in the morning as Emperor.  As the lid was lifted, there was silence which  gave way to a gasp.

What was inside the lid  is, of course,  history now:,  bits of egg shell,  a  stub to an old  Chinese movie ,  a greenish marble slightly chipped,  a piece of string and a   dead mouse.  (Synthetic of course. You wouldn’t want a  real one.)

The  ways of the great and the near great had always been beyond the understanding of ordinary  people and here was deep stuff indeed. Luckily the likes of  Wolfson, Penn, or Ickes  would be available to explain it.

 

Like it so far?  If you think  the characterization of  Hillary Clinton’s  self proclaimed foreign affairs credentials is a mite slighting, maybe even derisive,  please go to the sources yourself , and make up your own baublethon equivalency table . (A side trip to FactCheck.org might provide some perspective. )

 

Whoever you are, and  whatever your political orientation,  whether you were born in the east or born in the west or sent by wire photo from another realm, whether you are rich or poor, or  young or old,  you have to admit one thing - as foreign policy credentials go,  this is pretty  thin stuff.  It’s thin stuff even if you buy into  the exaggerations.  Even if you think,  for instance,  “attenuating  the southern European traffic flow problems and resolving endemic environmental hazards” is a fair translation  of  “helping a motorist with a bug of his windshield on the road to Zagreb” , it’s still thin stuff. Try the following gedanke experiment.  Imagine someone is  applying to you for a very significant government job and  volunteers (volunteers mind you) that foreign affairs experience is a personal and distinguishing specialty and, on asking  for examples,  you are handed  a sheet which includes:

Item- Took a trip into a Tuzla, recently a war zone.  The plane had to make a corkscrew landing.  There were reports of  sniper fire in the hills.

Item-   Argued with my husband unsuccessfully over sending troops to Rwanda.

 

 Wouldn’t you even suspect that someone must be pulling your leg?  (Not even  the verbal embroidery that the trip to Tuzla involved running from the plane under actual sniper fire would help that much)

 

(As an aside, not that familiar with  workings at the palace,  I personally was surprised not by its evidence of  substantiality but the absence of it.  If such items even made the list,  much less were featured, then the Princess had less effective foreign experience than I would thought any Princess would have just by being Princess.  I wouldn’t have  figured, you see, on realities like  need for security clearance, invitation to sit in on National Security meetings  etc. if it hadn’t been raised.)

 

Now keep in mind , in doing the gedanke experiment, that the items before you were not wrenched from a reluctant witness.  This wasn’t something shown shyly and with a deprecating  shrug.  (“I was busy that year.”) This  wasn’t something produced entre deux at an informal gathering after a couple glasses of wine, and where exaggerations are in the spirit of things.  This was formal, coast-to-coast network stuff.

 

Now let’s go from  gedanke experiment premise to actual situation. This wasn’t even material submitted in defense.  (“I do too have diplomatic experience.”) This was attack material. This was ginned up to support  an effort to frame the electorate’s decision  in terms of  “who is the most credible commander on chief?”  You wouldn’t think,  in this election,  the opposition being a war hero,  you  would have to consult the Wizard to know  that of all the ways of framing the electorate’s decision possible, this is close to the worst.  In fact, what the Princess actually said, and what this was in support of,   was "I have crossed the threshold and met the national security test to be Commander-in-Chief. John McCain has also met that test. Obama gave a speech."

 

So the list submitted was submitted as “I have them and you don’t” Imperial threshold crossing credentials.

Among the variety of scorched earth strategies, this is the special one which  experts will tell you is called  “the equal opportunity suffering for your side” scorched earth. In this one,  everyone on your team loses, you too.  A special feature of it is only your ultimate opponent profits.  (In a nursery this is  akin to the tantrum. )   So we are not just talking unscrupulous here,  a word sometimes associated with the Princess, we are talking the deep beyond even deep.   Indeed after the initial astonishment at the enbaublement wore off,  and the sardonic comments began to multiply, the Princess retorted that these were just evidence  of  “gender bias” even though many of them came from other females. And this in turn suggested  that maybe the  Princess, widely credited with being shrewd,  was trying  the “I have crossed the threshold and the very paucity  of my threshold crossing credentials testifies to  gender bias” play,  which is like a triple axel followed by a triple toe-loop.  If you can do that one, you better put it in only at the start of your program.

 

In any event, the impression left was that there was some kind of subtlety here way beyond the ordinary.  Meanwhile Wolfson, Penn, and Ickes distracted attention by a litany of  her rival’s failings.  Her rival responded in kind. Attention was distracted. The whole issue quiesced. And some of the wiser heads came to the opinion that the Princess did it to inspire her own team to a higher level of ferocity.  Or to reinforce her victimhood. Or to lure her rival into making speeches, which the Princess has established as inherently suspect.

 

And then one day, quite without warning,  the Princess announced that the real, the  only true credential that qualified one to be Emperor was to have served as a prisoner of war.  She asserted  she had crossed the prisoner of war threshold  herself when on one of her trips to a war zone, she had become locked in her cabin.

 

This was so amazing that her  rival for the nomination, not accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics in the raw, was unable to respond satisfactorily.  And  she managed to convince her party that, given those credentials, she should be the nominee.

 

 However, that being the accepted credential for Emperorship,  she lost badly. So badly that her husband said at the end “Thank heavens it was just a fairy tale.”

March 19, 08
Obama has has been highly praised for the candidness, eloquence etc. of his speech. I admired it greatly. But he did not help himself, And the media will not help him unless prodded with electrified sticks. (Does anyone have one?) 
Understanding of Obama's role is really not possible without answers to some of the following.
1) Was Wright"s discourse really all that unusual for a black church? I suspect it was much more common than currently supposed and what really shocks "honkeybaby the disparager" is realization (as only U Tube can do it) of an actual, embittered black community. How come no one told him? (And the ones most shocked are those who had the least interest in learning.) 
2) In line with this how about a list of current and past parishioners. Who ELSE was in the congregation. May be Oprah was in the next pew. That would give it a whole different perspective. 
3) Are there any measures of the positive contributions of the church (lives, neighborhoods helped) and a sample list of sermons of which incendiary anti-white anti-US stuff was just one theme Was love of God, of ones fellow man, and self discipline also common themes. Maybe...think of it... there was something people needed quite separate from the bitterness they could not get elsewhere,.
4) My father was a strong and extraordinary man who had towering rages and some extreme views and I try to imagine one of the kids trying to convert or confront him. We took what we could that was good and endured the rest and resolved not the pass it on., just like everyone else all over the world.
5) Maybe what really has people shocked is the discovery that O'bama  has lived a black experience and what that means and that that is more parlous than they imagined. Those people who imagine Obama standing up to his father should also wonder then why he did not stand up not just to this father;s extremism but to all he circumstances that produced it.  Why not do both right?

What they to miss most of all, in their journalistic triviality, is the notion that standing up against his father is what Obama is doing NOW, and  no less the conditions which made his father that way
And of all the people who might have stood up and confronted their fathers can they think fo someone who might do it to greater effectiveness than Obama.?

 Saddened (It won;t help Obama but it was the dragon that would rise) 

cglobek

Hillary is the first woman,  McClain is the first septuagenarian, and Barrack us the first black to have a good shot at the Presidency. Right?  But only one of the  three is running with a professed demographic rationale.  I have not yet heard Obama mention race, either explicitly or in code. I haven't heard McCain claim  he was running as old folks (although representing it as 'experienced' is OK.) But Hillary is running emphatically and unabashedly as a woman, and mentions it frequently. She does riffs on it in fact.  So there is not really an 'old'  candidate,  or a 'black' candidate but there is a female candidate.  It is in  Hillary's interest to do this of course After all the female vote is something like 53%. So I am not complaining. Simply observing.  If there is an “ethnic candidate”,  it is not of his own will Obama.

Nothing really  controversial yet. OK?

But it against this, and notwithstanding this,  that we have to appraise Ferraro's assertion that Obama is "where he is" because he is black,  something to an extent seconded by Buchanan ( and as an American Conservative subscriber, this is  less than I expected  from Buchanan). 

Barrack did not get into Harvard Law because he is black.  Did not get to be President of the Law Review because he is black. His book Dreams from My Father.  was not accepted by the publisher and become the touchstone it has because he is black. He did not get to be the talk of the Chicago progressive community because he is black. In his early years in the Illinois Senate he did not author some 970 bills (Hillary wrote 20 in 6 years in the Senate manly about naming post offices...check it out) and co-sponsor some 2000 others, because he is black. Nor does he draw immense crowds because he is black.  He is a charismatic figure and an extraordinary  orator.  He is, if nothing else, you would think Americans would understand it, great theatre black or white, male or female.   Saying he was invited to the Democratic  convention to speak because he was black,  is on the order of claiming they invited  Louis Armstrong to play the trumpet because he was black and not because he was the musician he was.  (Ferarro apologists simply would not understand why blacks would consider that demeaning.) And while admittedly the wrong ethnicity might have been a disqualifier (isn’t that always true in politics?) he was invited as an orator and the open minded  thrilled to  Obama’s words  not because they were black words....I didn’t know words had color...but because they the words they were.

So you could at least make a case that we  have an unusually  clear instance of someone becoming prominent essentially on merit.  Just imagine it. And in America? About which figure in recent politics, incidentally,  is this any clearer?

Now blacks represent about 15% of the electorate,. I thought.  And I am being assured by  someone who has spent years in America, observed politics, and passed 6th grade arithmetic   that the non-college,  low income,  post 50 aged female,  just plain “not going to vote for any black”  tiers in sum is smaller.  Based on what?  A candidate has to be from somewhere and wherever that is,  there are advantages and liabilities.   Given US national racial sensibility, running for national office as a black is an advantage? 

Isn’t “preposterous” a fair label for that?  Surely.  Based on behavior so far,  why isn't that more likely to allow him regional prominence but doom him nationally? And isn’t it more likely that what we are watching in process is a tragedy or sorts?  The final comment of  a truly  lamentable age, the last gasp of  disgraceful mine me “gimmee gimmee guys.” The generation I am part of.   Before we turn over the wreckage we’ve left  to our inheritors.

It would seem to me that Ferraro is legitimately and honestly even  earnestly simply unable to distinguish between a Jesse Jackson candidacy  or her own candidacy and an Obama candidacy. It seems to be a matter of  resolution limit in which her mind can picture  things. She sees the world in 600-800  pixels and black and white   The matter with Hillary, as her candidacy makes all too clear, of course  is not  intellectual limitation,  simply lack of scruples.  (Another motif in our unfolding tragedy.

What I can’t figure out in Buchanan.

cglobek