Black or Female? What’s Scarier?
Eugene Robinson – Two for a Breakthrough – washingtonpost.com
For the moment let’s assume that we’ve come far enough to seriously consider electing the first U.S. president who can be described without using both the adjectives “white” and “male.” Who has the better chance of breaking through, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Is “white” the qualification that people are less willing to forgo, or is it “male”?
I think people are less willing to forgo “male”. It’s stupid and, yes, it’s sexist but I really get the impression that Hillary Clinton “bothers” a lot of people — even people who are politically and otherwise socially liberal. It’s really not so much her politics. I feel pretty confident that the same ideas, coming from a man, would be more palatable. It’s her sex. Her sex combined with her strong personality. She’s not “womanly” enough. She’s not soft or compliant enough.
Barack Obama may be black but he’s a fairly “white” black guy. Compare him to…oh…Jesse Jackson. Jesse’s a “black” black guy. Barack’s a “whitish” black guy. So, Barack doesn’t scare white people in quite the same way Jesse Jackson might scare them.
Am I crazy? Or am I just putting words to something a lot of white liberals really feel but just don’t talk about?
Look, I’m not saying any of these feelings we have are good or right. I’m just saying that I think they’re there and they’re going to affect how people vote.
Posted by RebeccaHartong on December 22, 2006 under Uncategorized
Barack is going to be president…just watch.
Even though I worked in his office for a pretty short time (until I quit to go work for money — what a mistake that was), but I spent a lot of time on the telephone calling local legislators to check on addresses and whatnot, and MAN….I would start with my “Hello, my name is Valerie and I am calling from Senator Obama’s office and –” ….”Oh PLEASE…hold on…I will put you through to the Representative.”
ZOW. The guy’s name opened doors BIGTIME.
I would not vote for ANYONE stupid enough to hang out with Bill Clinton for longer than a week!
Hm.. Bill Clinton is actually looking pretty darned good to me these days.
I won’t deny that when the whole Lewinsky thing was going on I was pretty annoyed with him — not because he was getting blowjobs from his intern (though that showed amazingly poor judgement) but because he lied about getting blowjobs from his intern. A lot of people will claim that it would only be natural for him (or for any man) to lie about something like that. Still, he was under oath. I guess I’m just old-fashioned enough to think that means something. If you promise to tell the truth, then you should tell the truth. Even when it’s really embarrassing.
Whatever. All things considered, blowjobs from an intern are a pretty minor infraction when compared with starting an unjust war that’s resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Bill Clinton may be a horndog, but he’s really a pretty good politician. As for Hillary — it’s interesting to speculate. Did Bill help her get where she is today? Or did he hold her back? Maybe she’d already be president if not for him.