Geraldine Ferraro accuses Barack Obama of being a token.
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EDIT TO ADD: Something Awful goes into more detail about the future.
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George W. Bush suggests Obama lacks “seriousity” to be President
“See, when we pointed out how that filthy darkie was only in his position out of some sort of social affirmative action, it’s alright. But my word, that boy and all his little hoodlums start rattling off about how racist it appears, and you know what? That’s just tearing this party apart. You know what? Shame on you, Senator Nigger. Shame on you.”
Huckabee proposes that Obama would be Muslim if he could, but the other Muslims won’t let him in because they don’t want his cooties.
Oh, come now, MGK. While Ferraro’s assessment of the impact of Obama’s race on his candidacy is by no means accurate*, equating “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position” to “Obama’s a token” is just bad reasoning. You usually do a lot better than that. When I want cheap, glib political humor, I can always go to Keith Olbermann. He’s got flashy graphics and pleasantly graying hair.
*(But, really, is saying “I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign – to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against… If 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.” significantly different than saying “The Obama campaign is unique because it threatens to overcome, at least symbolically (and some might argue that ‘symbolically’ is half the battle right from the get-go), the racial power gap in America – which is something no country has done… That’s why the Obama campaign is impressive. From a symbolic standpoint, the Hillary campaign is about catching up to the rest of the world. The Obama campaign is about lapping it”? Aside from which candidate she and you are each supporting?)
Colin, the phrase “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position” makes it explicitly about race, and Ferraro knew that – it’s why she spent the next day saying “no, I’m not the racist, they’re the racists” and going on, of all shows, Bill O’Reilly to get a sympathetic ear.
My post was purely a response to the standard Hillary argument that electing her would be a Big Deal because she’s a woman – it’s in her stump speech and she mentions it at every debate. You’ll note Obama rarely if ever says “electing me is a big deal because I’m black,” because his campaign isn’t about that.
Both your comments and hers are explicitly about race, and both in my view overestimate the importance of race in Obama’s appeal. But they’re both legitimate pieces of analysis, rather than rhetorical hand grenades, or something similarly unsporting. No reason that race should be a silenced topic when no one’s saying anything bigoted or inflammatory.
The obvious difference between your comments and hers is that you’re an immensely entertaining and consistently insightful blogger, while she’s a prominent political figure with ties to the Clinton campaign. As such your comments stand as something can be chewed over and agreed or disagreed with, while hers have been inflated into some kind of racist personal attack that must be publicly atoned for. Hardly fair, but after the walloping Clinton took for citing LBJ’s work on civil rights, she really should have known better.