And Clinton defenders want to defend this? Seriously. Anyone? Anyone want to say this isn’t a pattern now?
No. I won’t vote for her in the general election. It is now official.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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My husband has said the same thing about not voting for her in the general election. I’m not there yet, but she could sway me yet.
Also, if there are any people still unhappy with us calling Hillary by her first name, they are encouraged to click the link you provide, and check out the official campaign signs.
Of course her site calls her Hillary. We don’t need to obey. This way they differentiate her from Bill and create a soft-focused impression of her as an accessible, feeling woman, like the next door neighbor from whom you might borrow a cup of flour, a kind of U.S. mother goddess. The gender card cuts heavily both ways. And the Clintons will have it all ways. With their soft racism they are showing their primal political instincts, scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Bob Johnson incident is so transparent: obviously the statement and the later clarification were coordinated. The statement was obviously made to slur Obama and cause offence to him, because it is entirely meaningless, but the clarification was ready even before Johnson opened his mouth, in which once again Obama’s integrity is questioned and Clinton is praised. That is, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton!.
for one reason: they are cut from the same cloth.
Sick, slick, lowdown attacks.
I don’t want to keep saying I told you so so the next time this problem pops up – and you know there’s going to be a next time – my reply will be “Ibid. n/t”
There will be a next time and a next all through to Feb. 5th. And those people like Greg Sargent who actually said:
will still be “acting” like they don’t see the problem. As I wrote:
Because, you know, they don’t “see” race. It’s just “a social construct”.
*No, BooMan, that still does not apply to you. 🙂
Wow! A veiled drug reference from the founder of BET? Has he checked out the music videos that his channel shows on a regular basis?
And he THEN had the nerve to say this:
Lord knows we can’t have that! Quality acting and programming? Heaven’s no. More 50 cent, please.
Damn, Bob, pick your stereotype: Druggie or Sidney? At least be consistent with your attacks!
Bob Johnson is a complete tool and all around ass. He became a billionaire trading on the stereotypes of Black men and women (becoming quite petulant when called on it), so why stop now?
Robert Johnson is a Tom.
Always has been. Always will be.
If a white surrogate like Kerrey or Shaheen won’t work, get a surrogate with a black face.
I wonder what the folks said in that crowd when he started off on his rant.
He and his network have never been for black folks, he’s just been there for the dollars.
I barely watch BET, but now…hey, no complaints if he or it goes down.
Oh, they definitely wanted someone with Black skin stupid enough to do this. Subtlety is not his strong suit.
I was reading the comments section after I read this story (I think TPM) and someone made a great point about Hillary: she wouldn’t sit beside a Larry Flynt or Hugh Hefner, so why would she be grinning next to that purveyor of videos thisclose to soft porn?
Which made me remember that she criticized gaming (Grand Theft Auto specifically) but also criticized media sex and violence. As a refresher:
And from her speech to the foundation:
Ah, yes: the so-called protector of children and the purveyor of filth are trying to slam a man of Barack Obama’s character, eh? I guess one hand washes the other.
Both Hillary AND Bob have a lot of damned nerve.
Was, once again, the insulting and extremely stupid “explanation”:
THUD.
Okay, all the other “explanations” were a stretch, but this is a S – T – R – E – T – C – H.
The only people that will believe that are the types defending Clinton’s dog whistles.
fabooj-
honestly, some people just can’t hear it, and it doesn’t make them bad people necessarily. The only thing that I think might resonate with them is to ask them whether or not they think it’s worth it to win if the most reliable part of the party is howling in pain.
I really think that some of the defenders really don’t hear it. In the same way that much of America listened to Tweety night after night and didn’t hear the misogynism UNTIL anger about it affected an election.
I admit that sometimes I don’t hear it. I’m a white girl from the midwest. I live in a very racially divided city and state. I’m more attune to it now because it has been pointed out to me. But sometimes I’m tone deaf. I admit it. But when people point it out to me, I do try to listen for it.
It really, really bothers me that people refuse to believe that other people are, in good faith, saying they hear it. In the same way that it bothered me when men in my office dismissed my comments about tweety’s misogynism over the years. As if my opinion as a woman shouldn’t at least make them try to see my side of the story. As if it was just another “whiny woman” complaining about sexism when we all KNOW that there is no sexism anymore. To me it’s the same thing.
I’m not defending the defenders. I’m trying to understand them to figure out a way to make them listen to the people that ARE hearing it and ask themselves if maybe there is something to it.
You know maryb, that is just what I am trying to do in the other direction….pointing out that it’s very easy to rush to judgement and to judge every tiny thing that others say, but when you see how often we misuse a word or words in our everyday communicating and blogging and how it distorts our meaning and intent, however accidentally it just makes me have to sit back and look at things a little more carefully and not be so quick to paint a picture that might be incorrect.
I suggest that if you expect to hear “rasicm” you will surely do that, sometime it will be real and other times it will be not. I am myself not sure at this moment what is PC to say as regards to this subject so as not to be labeled racists myself.
It’s concerning to me that one would read an article and immediately rush to a judgement and conclusion that they simply could not vote for a person, based on that. There will be no perfect candidate on either side, so we will have to select someone with flaws, so it’s a question of which flaws we can most easily accept.
I submit also that if this was ones chosen candidate, say Edwards, would Booman and others have jumped to immediately condemn.
Why do you question my integrity?
Do you seriously think I would support John Edwards for five seconds if his surrogates were doing what the Clinton surrogates are doing? Seriously? I don’t want to believe that.
I think you would want to look into it more and not immediately condemn him. I have never read of you giving one iota of a break to Clinton. And if you did rush to judgement on “Edwards” I would feel the same way and would write these same words.
I don’t question your integrity, I question your ability to not be swayed by your own emotional kneejerk reactions based on your own personal biases.
I also think as a site owner therefore with some influence you would want to be more impartial and less rushing to judgement and inflamatory. I still wonder who you would suggest to support if Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination.
This whole thing is not benefiting me to write all this stuff, to try to bring a little reason to the stampeeding of judgement that is evidenced on this site. As usual it’s making my heart beat fast and my blood pressure go up and I am not even a Hillary supporter, per se. However I am becoming one and I will fully support her if she wins the nomination.
black bloggers spend most of their time with each other. Why? Because whites refuse to admit that we have seen a pattern of racism and condescension since Iowa confirmed that Obama could win over white voters.
I’ve said before that I am not an Obama supporter; but attacks on the man and not his record or his stands on issues is taking a few hundred pages out of the Rove handbook of divide and conquer. The Clintons are trying to pry white voters away from the Obama camp, use the Latino vote, and keep enough blacks in line to win the nomination.
Hillary’s also playing what we feminists used to call ranking, saying that women (meaning white women) deserve more consideration than ‘those colored people’–particularly ‘those colored boys’ like Obama. This shyt has been going on since Susan B. Anthony and her crew got mad at the Radical Republicans for passing the Fifteenth Amendment ahead of women. This is the kind of shyt I used to see in the Seventies and early Eighties as well. What white feminists could not see is that we black women could not forget about or discard black men in the struggle, no matter how many issues we had with them; we had each other.
But that was then, this is now. We have the spectacle of Robert Johnson–no race man–casting allusions on what exactly Obama was doing in his acknowledged misspent youth compared to Bill and Hill almost separating and divorcing while he was governor of Arkansas because of his raging nymphomania. Let’s get a grip here. This ranking of oppressions, suggesting that the nomination and the presidency is only Hillary’s to win because she’s a woman; of using surrogates, not to criticize Obama’s record or his stands on issues, but to insist that there is something sinister about the man’s younger years certainly makes more than a few people’s blood pressure to go up. Because if a picture showed up tomorrow portraying either Bill or Hillary toking up during the Sixties or Seventies, they’d pounce on it as a fake, Photoshopped, you name it. And blame it on the Obama camp.
I’ll bet you those pictures exist, too.
In fact, Bill Clinton’s just opened his big mouth again claiming that he has a list of slurs that Obama’s allegedly slung at Hill.
Oh, poor Hillary. Poor, poor woman. Poor sinned against, much maligned woman. She doesn’t deserve to be pushed around. HA. That woman and that husband of hers are ruthless individuals who will stop at NOTHING to get what they want. They’ll paint him as the second Sharpton; or Osama’s nephew if it will get their way.
I swear if this shyt doesn’t stop, I may ‘forget’ to vote Democratic in this next important election myself. I have never seen anything this ugly, racist and divisive in my life, with only a year to go until November.
I wish you would give the benefit of the doubt to me who has not referred to anyone in a hateful manner, nor I hope perceived as racist.
To say it’s remarks like this, because why, I am not willing to buy the whole racism thing. Because I don’t attribute all these references to racism as you or others do. I am not saying something is not going on, there are sore points that are thrown around there and some don’t want to hear about it or talk about it but yet it’s there.
To say that talking about Obama’s drug use is racist is unfair, is it racist because he is a black man, would it be racist if it was about Hillary.
You know that this drug use will be a part of the nationals if he wins, but no one is supposed to mention it.
I am not unsympathetic to your point of view, but I for one would like to raise the national dialogue on this whole issue.
Your assesments and comments re. Clinton could be called hatism and even perhaps racism that’s for sure, she’s guilty of “ranking” for heaven sakes.
Well I am tired of all of this, going to take a rest now and get on to something else.
been watching all this, and have to say it’s this last incident that’s basically got me saying ‘way too much of a pattern’ – that plus the evidence from NH that finally spelt out what political advantage there was in Clinton risking alienating her black support base.
I have to say that I still think quite a number of Obama supporters have completely overplayed and/or conflated certain incidents. The MLK /LBJ stuff for me in particula stood out as pure Hillary bashing and deliberate race-baiting without any real proof. Personally I was far more irked to watch Obama with exactly zip justification slyly try and slip under MLK’s mantle. Talk about chutzpah.
Around that incident I was also very troubled by the number of black men who came out to attack Hillary – and just men in general. But the sense I had was “better a guy who’s not really African American and whom we’ve previously attacked as ‘not black’ than some uppity woman even if she actually has a pretty good record with our community”.
But it’s gone far too far now for Clinton not to be tainted with the racism of ‘surrogates’. I don’t think she’s racist, but being prepared to benefit from playing the race card is pretty corrupt politics.
None of it makes me like Obama any better. It certainly doesn’t make me like many of his supporters on Kos any better who are picking up anything tehy can and sticking it to Clinton. The problem with that tactic is that 1) it seriously erodes understanding of the seriousness of the real incidents and 2) is making it impossible for anyone to have a robust and honest conversation about the candidates without being accused of some agenda or another, being a candidate x shill etc etc.
I’ll repeat in part what I wrote in that diary
I’m Australian, watching all this from the other side of the ocean. I have no candidate preference other than at some point you all get your shit together and ensure one of the top 3 gets elected over a Republican or the rest of the world really will never forgive you.
That I was alluding to in my post from last week. I’ve posted it on other blogs and I got a lot of interesting input from people. A lot of people seem geniunely unaware and a lot of white women, are surprised that the “we” isn’t all that.
I just read this over at BlogHer.
You know what? I agree with you on your point in your last sentence (although I make no judgment about what BooMan would do). I think most people, once they choose their candidate, are willing to forgive a lot. So if something sexist, for example, would come out of the mouth of Barak Obama or one of his surrogates, I think there are Obama supporters who could express discomfort with it but would probably have reasons for why they are going to vote for him anyway. Some people might call those excuses, but the person would call them reasons. And how do we judge?
I don’t actually have much problem with people who would, in my example, admit Obama’s shortcomings, admit the remarks were sexist and then explain why they were going to vote for him in spite of it. Maybe sexism isn’t the biggest issue for them. But I would have a problem if the person tried to contort the definition of sexism to prove that no sexism occurred.
We need to be honest about all the candidates. We need to be able to say out loud when we see them doing something that is unacceptable either directly or through surrogates.
In this case, I see what BooMan and many others see. It’s NOT why I’ve chosen not to vote for Hillary. I made my choice long ago based on other issues. And I will support her in the general if she gets the nomination. She’s a very competent woman. But I do see what the others see here. And I believe that if we want to make our party better we need to have an honest discussion about it.
You may not see it. But if there is a possibility that you do see it (and I’m NOT accusing you of that), I’d rather hear you admit admit that it MIGHT be racist and it’s not going to affect your choice, than have you defend it as not racism. Your choice of who to vote for is a complicated matter and I’m sure you have good reasons for that choice. Reasons that may, in your mind, outweigh it.
I see racism here. If Hillary gets the nomination I will vote for her. My positive reasons outweigh the negative of the racism. For me, at least.
I can see what others are seeing from their point of view, however, I also see that these remarks have to be explained in order to make the judgement of racism, as in, well the whole explanation of “guess who’s coming to dinner.” it was not obvious to me in the way it was obvious to others as I saw that movie in a whole other way…..
so I could choose to see the movie as described by others and therefore make a judgement that any reference to a character in a movie that played a part of a black man in the process of trying to marry a white woman and comes upon her family at dinner must therefore be that the character in the movie is held in a negative way by a substantial portion of blacks and therefore must be racist.
But what if the vast portion of blacks held that character to be a fine and wonderful one, would that reference been called racists. And what indeed if that vast majority of white people held that character to be a wonderful one, which is what I think they did, would not that benefit Obama.
So in order for me to make the racist judgement I would have to go through the whole convaluted pattern of determining just how the preponderance of blacks held that character to be. That in itself has it’s whole list of problems regarding the ability to ever know that with any certanity as one can never know that with any assuradness about any group of people, even those who are a part of it.
Hatism vs racism, hatism is accepted, it’s perfectly fine to “hate” Hillary, all you need for that is a bunch of judgements, but if you direct a hateful/hurtful comment to a black it’s racism. Seems like these things are off balance to me.
Let’s talk about the movie.
The premise is as follows:
A progressive, left-wing family is confronted with a daughter that wants to marry a black man. This tests their alleged tolerance and lack of race-consciousness. They deliberately made the parents pro-civil rights to put them to the test.
Secondly, Poitier is portrayed as an eligible husband in every regard (except for his race) in order to make the point entirely clean. There could be no objection based on class, education, culture, or ability to provide. It was being narrowed down to race.
In the end, the feel good conclusion was that two people that love each other should trump all the difficulties an interracial couple would inevitably face in 1960’s America.
But, now take this from the black perspective. In order to make Poitier acceptable, he had to be denuded of all black indicators. No accent, no colloquialisms, no special dietary preferences, or odd musical tastes, or modes of dress. And, obviously, no issues of class. This is what the white community demanded of a black man if they were going to allow them into their world and their family.
That is why the role became a symbol, a negative symbol, for many in the black community. If you act white you will be accepted, but if you cannot pass for white, you cannot play.
Johnson brings up the role for an obvious reason. He isn’t saying that it’s okay to kiss Obama, but that it isn’t okay to kiss him. This is for two reasons. First, insofar as he appears to pass the Drayton’s test, he’s a fraud. In reality, he isn’t the guy with the flawless resume than you’d let your daughter marry. (This is for the white folks).
Second, insofar as he is black, he’s trying to do that old game of ‘passing’, so he is not much more than an Uncle Tom, House Negro, Sell-Out, or whatever you want to call it. (This is for the black folks).
The problem for you is that you are not conversant with this type of racial dialogue which has been central (in everything from Ebonics, to the comedy of Chris Rock, to the criticisms of Bill Cosby) to the conversation now for over a decade. Again, this is dog whistle politics where the sound is above the octave where you can hear it, but is near torture to those with ears to hear.
Booman, I understand your perspective, and what you are saying. Conversely I am saying to you that a segment of black/white society might see this whole thing as you have laid out another great majority would not, either have the vaguest idea what you were talking about or have a completely other opinion about the movie as I do.
What you describe is ‘racism’ within a race which is a whole other thing which I think African Americans have to work out for themselves.
Now once again to the point of hateism, as directed at Hillary, if she were black and Obama was white, all the hate towards her would then be labeled racist. But it would still be the same words she is labeled with now.
Think for a moment that dog whistle politics that is near torture can be felt other than regards to race, as in I am very offended as a person about many remarks made about the Clintons, but I can’t call them racist and can only call them hatists.
This whole thinkg is making my head spin right now but suffice it to say I got each and every point anyone made here, and that I have my own which I hope you will allow me and take under a tiny bit of consideration.
Maybe if we can wrap up hateism and racism and send it out into the universe, we can get some place on this planet, but methinks to find more and more reasons for hateism and racism to go on is the wrong road.
you’re perspective on the movie isn’t right or wrong, and neither is mine. The thing to remember is that we are not the audience for these remarks.
There are two audiences.
His message his both audiences very strongly. The latter was direct, by evoking the archetype, Sidney Poitier. The former was indirect. It was designed to evoke a response, and the response is the weapon. When people like me cry fowl, white people get defensive and resent black people, and thereby turn away from Obama’s campaign.
I know I’ve said this eight different ways, but maybe the ninth way will resonate with you.
As I said I got your point and it resonates with me just as much as attack against a women or Hillary such as “what did she do but just sit in the White House,” hurtful stereotypes for women and has been used on them for years…..as in “she made her way by the coattails of her husband” a hurtful stereotype for many years for women….or she slept her way to the top or she’s too competent/strong(or whatever) she must be a lesbian.
Yeah unfortunately we have those stereotypical attitudes about a lot of people and groups and within those groups there is a lot of pain felt by those attacks just as it is with the race issue, but those attacks and events never rise to the level of the race issue.
I think the big issue here with you and I is that you attribute each and every one of these things to Hillary as part of a grand plan which you add new patches to everyday. And you attribute anything anyone who is remotely connected to her says that is in any way perceived by you as negative.
Therefore, to you she has directed Mr. Johnson to say these things, to get some kind of reverse backlash boomerang and not to personal feelings that Mr. Johnson may have had interracially with regards to Mr. Obama. Because she wants to turn all black American’s against her, is that it. This is what I have a problem with. That this benefits her in any way.
She doesn’t need black America to win the nomination, she needs white America and Hispanics. That is clear from her own campaign’s analysis, and also just to common sense.
Is it helping Hillary’s campaign?
I don’t discount that some of the charges against Hillary Clinton have a sexist component. But I haven’t seen one word out of the Edwards’ campaign that could be construed as sexist. Neither Obama nor Edwards are engaging in this type of politics and neither are their surrogates.
Let me ask you something. If people predict that the Clintons will inject race into the campaign as a way of turning white people off Obama, and then we see it happen, shouldn’t that at least pique your interest?
If I accuse them of using this strategy on Friday and then on Sunday they do the exact thing I was accusing them of…again, doesn’t that rate a raised eyebrow?
I don’t know why you have chosen to discuss hate vs. racism. What I am discussing is not necessary either of those things, but a strategy of playing on the inherent hatred and racism of the voting public…of stirring it up, rather than tamping it down, of injecting it into the conversation, rather than letting it be a low volume undercurrent.
Who are the candidates that are injecting gender into the campaign? Who is suggesting that Hillary Clinton isn’t qualified because she is too feminine? Are they even bringing up her past and the scandals of the past?
This is intentional and it is working and there is nothing Obama can do to make it stop working. The only hope is that enough people will demand they stop that they do, indeed, stop. But I bet you anything they will have a surrogate poke Obama with a stick again in the next couple of days. And when they do, I will say I told you so and you will tell me that I am just using every example to tar the Clintons.
Please do not use polling analysis to jusify your position when polling analysis is probably flawed.
Booman, I am not trying to be obstinate here and I am not uninformed nor stupid, I realize that a vast number of people will completely buy your premise and will feel totally justified in doing so.
Still all in all if any of the recent occurrences can be seen as rasict, which I still say is questionable as to the label, it would be the Bob Johnson one as to your explanation, so I will give you that one ok….I still say the others are even more of a stretch than Bob Johnson, and I do not give you those, therefore in my estimation it would take more to give me some indication of a pattern and would allow me to buy your premise.
Enough! Peace!
ok. thanks for the civil debate.
What exactly do you mean by “all the hate”? If you’re referring to the misogynistic comments, why would that be called ‘racism’? Now, look over at DailyKos or Democratic Underground and look at comments directed toward Cynthia McKinney. Tell me, those are not racist comments.
I don’t see a rush to judgment anywhere. This was a snowball effect, as the comments have been coming for at least 5 weeks.
There’s a double edged sword here. Unless, there’s a Klansman, self-admitted racists or Republican involved, too many white liberals are quick to pull out Sharpton as a defense mechanism. That’s the white, liberal way of dismissing every black person who says, “Yes, those are racist comments.”
How many black bloggers have been told that they’re “not being helpful” when they point out racism of other Democrats? How many times do we have to be told to shut up? There’s a reason, so many gay bloggers stopped blogging on major liberal blogs. In 2004, the same things that were said to the LBGT community are now being said to black people. Who’s gonna be next? Women? The few Latino or Asians? Disabled people? Is the ultimate goal of the liberal blogosphere to only have straight, white people represented?
And he THEN had the nerve to say this:
Lord knows we can’t have that! Quality acting and programming? Heaven’s no. More 50 cent, please.
Damn, Bob, pick your stereotype: Druggie or Sidney? At least be consistent with your attacks!
Bob Johnson is a complete tool and all around ass. He became a billionaire trading on the stereotypes of Black men and women (becoming quite petulant when called on it), so why stop now?
has put out a pbwiki that will tick all the racist comments Clinton surrogates will say about Obama, whether coming from a black sellout or a white kissass.
Go have a look:
http://clintonattacksobama.pbwiki.com/
Thanks for the link. I hope it gets wide circulation.
So I was listening to the radio on my way to work, and stumbled upon the local Radio One “hip-hop and R&B” station (the Russ Parr morning show).
So why did Parr have Armstrong Williams on his show, and even HE was denouncing Bob Johnson. As were the callers that I heard. There was a caller who also said (paraphrase), Bob Johnson taught his daughter to ride horses, while he’s teaching our daughters to ride other things. (Johnson’s daughter is an equestrian, and last I heard, was trying out for the Olympic team.)I know his motivation probably stems from dislike of the Clintons, but still.
And I just can’t get out of my mind how much of a Tom Johnson looked on the video. (Message: The Clintons sho’ been good to
meus. One suspects the gravy train ends with President Obama.)Bob Johnson must think we are stupid. He has pushed so much cultural crack in the Black community and the culture at large, but he knows no shame.
When Armstrong Williams is the voice of reason…wow. I can’t even finish the statement. We are in bizarro world, thanks to Billary’s slash and burn tactics.
from Frank James, Baltimore Sun:
The Big Bobcat tried to get his claws into Sen. Barack Obama today. The question is, did he draw blood?
The New York Times’s political blog, The Caucus, is reporting that Robert Johnson, the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television, or BET, and owner of the National Basketball Association’s Charlotte Bobcats, was campaigning with Sen. Hillary Clinton in South Carolina when he criticized Obama.
It was there that, as Katharine Seelye reports, Johnson made what appeared to be an allusion to Obama’s use of illegal drugs as a young man.
It was Johnson’s way of defending the New York senator and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, from accusations from the Obama camp and beyond that some recent Clinton comments were dismissive of both Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama.
Johnson has since tried to make his comments seem more benign, saying he was talking merely of Obama’s time as a community organizer and that anyone who thinks he was alluding to anything else (read drug use) is “irresponsible and incorrect.”
So he wants us to believe the invidious comparison he was making contrasting the Clintons to Obama was to say that Obama was a community organizer when the Clintons were advancing civil-rights? To borrow a phrase from Obama, that really does seem like the audacity of hope on Johnson’s part.
Johnson certainly has a right to issue a “clarifying” statement. But the public also has a right to be dubious, to believe that Johnson was indeed making an allusion to Obama’s self-admitted use of pot and cocaine as a young man.
Assuming that that’s what Johnson, a lawyer by training who knows how to use language, meant to do is interesting on a few levels.
Johnson made his fortune through a cable channel known in black America for showing so many rump-shaking music videos (videos with scantily clad women shaking their derrieres in the camera) that many people over the years have come to apply the term “bootylicious” to the genre of videos his channel showed.
Furthermore, many of those bootylicious hip-hop videos shown by his channel featured young male rappers whose subjects tended to run the very narrow gamut of guns, drugs, cars and women. (Did I mention drugs?)
Watch long enough and you’d likely see a “gangsta” light up a blunt, a marijuana stogie. This was the fare many black kids across America grew up on as they watched Mr. Johnson’s channel.
For that reason, even though Johnson became that rarest of rare creatures, a black billionaire after he sold his channel to Viacom, there’s ambivalence about him among many black Americans who viewed much of the programming on his channel as adding to many of black America’s problems.
So casting even veiled aspersions on Obama over his youthful use of drugs will no doubt make many people who know Johnson’s story and BET say “Now, wait one cotton-picking, bootylicious minute.”
As far as Sidney Poitier is concerned, how many young people in a college audience would get that reference to a 1967 movie?
Not only that; did Obama really ever say he wanted to be Poitier? Don’t remember that one.
The Clinton’s are “swift-boating” Obama without the 527. It is really shame-ful, what the Clintons are doing. Did Hillary promise to continue the repeal of the Paris Hilton & Bob Johnson tax cut??
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/08/estate-tax-bob-johnson/
Bob Johnson on Bob Johnson.
The guy is an ass and made an asshole statement but I’m confused as to how he’s a Clinton “surrogate”. I’m not informed enough – is he on her official policy team or just a high-profile supporter?
Also it seems mighty odd as a campaign strategy to apparently discredit Obama on youthful drug use to take away votes from African-Americans. In other words, I don’t see how mentioning it or alluding to it hurts him. It’s been in the news forever and it sounds (to my naive ears anyway) a lot more authentic him to have admitted it years ago and moved on rather than Bill Clinton style where he was right there in the room with it but didn’t partake.
I guess I’m just not refined enough to see how this particular move by Johnson would be helping Clinton at all in some pre-planned, strategic way rather than just an ignorant remark.
Pax
I would describe him as a high profile supporter.
Who was campaigning on a stage with Hillary Clinton.
The point is not to take away African-American voters, but white voters. The strategy is to have surrogates say things like ‘Obama is great because of his Muslim background’ or ‘Obama was just a lazy-ass drug fiend when Hillary was getting things done’. And when people protest, the Clinton accuse them of using the race card and makes white people feel like Obama is no different than Jesse and Al.
It’s beyond transparent at this point. We asked them to stop, and it just won’t stop.
But you know their supporters will just go on defending this trash, and the press hasn’t exactly been tough on them about it.
Thanks for the clarification. It’s hard for me to keep up with the hyper-focus on each campaign and what each one (and each one’s supporters) are saying or doing at any given moment.
I got no love for either Clinton and it started with failing to integrate the military and continued right up to the illegal and genocidal war he inflicted on my neighbors across the way in Serbia. I don’t need some two-bit comment from a surrogate to tip the scale any more for me against either one of ’em.
Pax
No. I won’t vote for her in the general election. It is now official.
doesn’t that contradict the notion that contested primaries are good for the party? i’m not sure if you’ve argued against the conventional wisdom that primary contests are bad and should be avoided at all costs, but a bunch of other high-profile bloggers on the left have made that point before.
all campaigns get nasty and dirty eventually, whether it’s a primary race or the general election. if you are so disgusted with the primary back-and-forth that you’re willing to rule out support for the eventual nominee in the general election, it seems to me that’s a vote in conventional wisdom’s favor.
no, I’ll happily vote for Obama after my choice loses.
I was already there on civil liberties and economic issues going back to their eight-year spree of arrogant, amoral narcissism in the 90’s, but this seals it.
I won’t vote for Hillary either, if she’s president we will still be in Iraq 4 years from now.
I am really a little shocked at these entries. Are people comfortable with President McCain?
In the next 4 years, we will CERTAINLY see 1 SC vacancy, and possibly two, and these are the liberal seats (Ginsberg and Stevens). Are people comfortable with nominees along the lines of Alito and Roberts again filling those seats? I am not. Choice would certainly be gone.
The judges that Bush has appointed now constitute a majority of the judges on the bench. Are people happy with this? Do we need more conservative judges?
More free trade agreements, anyone?
I understand the frustration with Hillary and Clintonism. Before choices are set in stone, I ask: Do we need more conservative justices on the SC?
IF she wins the nomination, I will still vote for her.
I won’t like it, but I am not about to cut my nose off to spite my face. This country simply cannot afford another Roberts or Alito.
Over at dailykos, urkana posted this on Friday:
Now, I have no plans to support Clintoon in any way, shape, or form. She won’t represent me or support the issues I care about. But why should I get upset when she uses divisive tactics to take away from Obama’s support, when Obama’s used the exact same kind of divisive tactics to expand his support? I mean, sure he didn’t SAY explicitly “I hate teh gay”, but he sure lobbed some dogwhistle language at the folks who do.
It’s unseemly and ugly, but methinks the candidate doth protest too much. If Obama gets a pass for making a coded appeal to evangelicals’ baser instincts, why should Clintoon be attacked for making a similar coded appeal to racists?
And how does either tactic represent this “change” I’ve been hearing so much about?
I agree with most of what you have said…further, if it had been Mrs. Clinton who had used drugs in her youth, would that have been fair game for anyone to use against her and I would bet my bottom dollar a lot of folks on this site would have never let that dog die.
I think his previous drug use is an issue that should be explored, he certainly isn’t hiding it and how could he think it would never be brought up…this is not racist to bring it up, unless, you can’t say any negative thing about Obama without it being race.
Booman in all truthiness, weren’t you anti Mrs. Clinton, long before she ran, and haven’t you just looked and waiting and pounced on whatever you could to support your position.
Who doesn’t think that Obama’s drug use would be used by the Republicans if he won the nomination.
Diane-
yes, I have opposed Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations since I first heard of them. But, I opposed her for the nomination of my party, not for the presidency. She was disqualified herself to be the leader of any party I belong to. I won’t tell others how to vote in the general, but this little old vote won’t be cast for her. I do not overlook racism. And I will not touch it.
Interesting that drugism is what pushed you over the top, not racism, isn’t it. According to your diary, this incident did push you over but how can you construe this as racism. I know you made that whole long case the other day, so is this twisted into racism, because it’s about a black man using drugs, which is referred to by another black man, who is a Clinton supporter, whom ‘you’ have decided is using a racial strategy.
Thanks heavens you did not go into law, building your cases as you do from scraps and making your delarative statements based on personal biases.
Johnson: “doing something in the neighborhood”
Translation: “doing crack in the ghetto.
Johnson: “That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, `I want to be a reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier `Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And I’m thinking, I’m thinking to myself, this ain’t a movie, Sidney. This is real life.”
Translation: Obama is trying to pass for white. He’s trying to be the guy your daughter can take home to her parents and they won’t be appalled because he is clean and articulate and not just some punk crackhead from the ghetto (but, see preceding comment, Obama was a punk crackhead from the ghetto).
If you want to try to spin that as just about his drug use you can. I’d ask you to find any black Americans who will agree with you.
so you are saying that a black man can be racist about another black man, that’s a new one to me and would seem to defy the definition, can you be racist about your own race.
Now for the ‘coming to dinner’ reference, I was around as an adult when that pic came out and it sure as hell was not about a black man trying to be white, but rather a black man loves a man’s daughter and they don’t want race to be a factor in that, in other words he wants to be seen as a man, not a type of man…Up until that time a black man could not kiss a white woman in a movie, nor have a romance, I think Belefonte kissed a white woman in a movie, who played a part of a partialy black woman and that was condemed to high heaven. At that same time as that movie came out many states still did not allow black and white marriage.
So Poitier broke trough a barrier in that movie, he was not the black man trying to be white, but the black man that said “I am black and proud of it, but I am also a man, so if you judge me for anything, judge me as a man. It was the very beginning of acceptance of the black/white marriage.
“so you are saying that a black man can be racist about another black man, that’s a new one to me and would seem to defy the definition, can you be racist about your own race.”
You clearly don’t live in Philadelphia, because that is old old news here.
There are PLENTY of racist black people who make other blacks the targets of their racism.
No I don’t live in Philly, I live in socal and have for over 40 years, but I still suggest to you that what you are referring to may not be racism but rather just pure and simple hate or intercine conflict.
Well, in a diary the other day you essentially said that women can be sexist about other women – because of fear, etc.. That’s probably a new one to a lot of men. But I agree with you wholeheartedly on that point. I’ve experienced it and sometimes I’ve found myself doing it. So why can’t a black man be racist about another black man?
See my answer above, it is surely something and is real, but I don’t think it fits the definition of racism, which appears to mean ‘as applied to another race’. So perhaps a new word needs to be coined.
wow.
Okay, let me take these two separately.
Johnson was talking to the black community with that comment, telling them that Obama is no Dr. Prentice, but a two-bit ghetto punk that would never pass with the liberal Draytons.
please see my comment on racism above….I still say, it’s not racism, it’s hate, contempt, it’s whatever you want to call it, but it doesn’t fit under racism which is intrinsically about another race…I will agree that the definition has been expanded to include anything desparaging that occurs about and or to a black person or persons.
Hey you want your point to be true, nothing I say will change your mind about this or about Mrs. Clinton, your mind had been made up long ago and you were just waiting for the proper (to you) evidence to support your negative feelings.
I am going to go out on a big limb here right now and say why don’t we talk about this whole racism things, why can’t it be discussed, it surely will need to be if Obama wins nomination or is it going to be a case of finding and outlining every indication of “rasicm”.
I say maybe we need to talk this out, nationally and decide just what role it’s going to play in America’s future. There are two obvious facts in this election, one is gender and the other is race, so either way we are going to be fighting one of these issues.
The thing is we all know he is black and she is a woman so lets go on from there.
This is more depressing than funny, but I think it will clear this up for you.
Chris Rock on Niggers.
I can’t believe that anyone who can read can believe this:
Um…don’t you know Juan Williams? He makes his livelihood off of hating blacks. I won’t try to assume anything about where you live or how many black people you actually know, but yes, there are black people, like Bob Johnson, who hate other blacks regardless of success.
They’re called self-hating.
Really, well look at the definition of racism, refers to other races, and in the end you make the statement, it’s called “self Hating”, which is my point exactly. To extrapolate racism out of self hating, or when a black person hates another black person it’s rasicm, but is it racism when a white person hates another white.
I submit we as a people have chosen to pull everything under this umbrella of rasicm…I am not saying hate doesn’t exist, but I am questioning whether what we are talking about here is racism or hatism.
If we simply called it hating, self hating, hatism, would in have the deleterious effect of calling it racism, which by the connotations we have taken to be the meaning of this, have become widened to include many and varied instances that ultimately inflame the situation.
Fine…let’s quibble with words. As always, the last refuge of the intellectual Democrat: semantics.
Can you go more into why you think replacing the term racism with hatism would be ultimately beneficial, especially in this situation?
Well for one thing hatism in not race based, it is just person based, so it is taken out of the realm of being about race. So then we have a fight about this or that, not race, race baiting and so on. Levels the playing field.
Either that or we have to further refine and define hatism, what is the base of hatism against Hillary, is it gender, then it would be sexism, is that better or worse than rasicm.
The thing to me is we have so laid out the maps for what is racism, lots of things are not allowed to be talked about, apparently you cannot connect MLK with Johnson as that is rasicm. If you favor a white over a black is that racism, or is that favorism.
We are wrapping ourselves up in these isms, including terrorism and I think it is to our detriment.
So maybe if we just talked about hatism in all its forms, we could take a step to reduce it, to stem it’s ever growing tide.
This is an emerging thought line for me so I don’t have all the t’s crossed, but it’s coming out of all these discussion recently.
Hey I hope only to be part of the discussion and to further it in a postive way.
I just had the scariest moment, just wrote all that and clicked something and boom it was all gone, luckily I found it.
I kind of hear you on this, although I don’t think we get anywhere with hatism either. I’ve had big arguments (I think on this blog) about the use of the term misogynist (someone who hates women). I’ve always said that when we label someone a hater, the conversation always turns into an argument about proving the hate rather than about the action that the person took or didn’t take. And what we need to do is evaluate the action.
If we want to move the conversation forward, it sometimes isn’t helpful to use a label EVEN when we are sure the label fits. Because then we just argue about the label.
I can understand that. I’d rather fight about the this and that of what’s actually going on than whether someone fits into a label.
I can’t spend more time on this, but before I go let me explain myself by take racism out of the picture but leave race in.
I’m going to confess that I’ve never heard of Mr. Johnson before this incident. I have no idea if he personally is a racist or not (and before people come in to prove to me that he is or isn’t, don’t bother, I don’t think it’s really important to what I think we should be discussing). But I do think that his use of language that evoked Barak Obama’s drug use was intentional. And the question is why? And I do think that the Bill Shaheen quote was intentional too. And the question is why?
You said earlier that you thought maybe we should be discussing Barak Obama’s drug use. OK. But I don’t think it is possible to discuss drug use without discussing the circumstances and the perceptions of society. And that brings us into discussions about race in America. And do discussions about race in America help or hurt each of the candidates?
BooMan has said he thinks the Clintons have a strategy here. I agree. I don’t think the Clintons are racist but I DO think they are the best people at the political game in America today. Let’s take racism out of their strategy but let’s keep race in the picture (because it is part of the picture).
Here’s Ezra Klein who, after he went through the same list of incidents that we’ve been talking about, says this:
(emphasis mine)
THAT’S the “this and that” we should be talking about imo. Not whether someone fits into a label.
I have to go for a while.
And as a reminder, the plot of the movie:
Hmmm…Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t remember Clinton supporters and surrogates, repeatedly bringing up Bush’s admitted drug usage. I was told that that was “unseemly” and, you know, he’s reformed now. So, I have to wonder why it’s different with Obama. When the Republicans rubberstamped the whims of an admitted cokehead, am I really supposed to quake at the thought of them bringing up drug use that was written about by the candidate?
Forget karl Rove. This has Mark Penn all over it. I never imagined he could make me almost as ill as Rove, but he’s done a damn good job so far.
I’m an Edwards supporter who would vote for Obama now if Edwards drops out.
TrumanDem
Truman’s Conscience
If she wins the nomination I will support her. The presidency is too important – if nothing else, because of the supreme court. I will not do anything to allow the next appointment to the supreme court fall into Republican hands.
But I do believe this is a strategy of the Clintons. I am disgusted by it. I truly hope they’ve crossed the line this time and the whole thing comes tumbling down on them. I doubt it will happen though, because this country still will not acknowledge how much racism drives decisionmaking here.
isn’t shameful when a person of color sucks up and sells-out.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×2668491
Obviously they didn’t check snopes too carefully…
Problem is that the letter will do damage. I’d love a Edwards/Obama ticket.
We knew this shit would come. People that want to believe it will believe it.
A lot of people don’t check out Snopes.com. They just pass it around and around and around the world.
Most of the people who pass this kind of S**T around don’t even know what snopes.com is, or how to check it.
No. I won’t vote for her in the general election. It is now official.
Let’s not paint ourselves into a corner. This is how NY Democrats wound up with two Republican mayors in a row. Let’s let the process go forward and see who has the most votes.
He/she who lives by the smear dies by the smear.
Mena.
Just saying.