Once again, you can take the charitable view if you choose to do so. If Obama had said it about Hillary, we’d surely know what he meant. Maybe Bill just meant that Barack is a young pup and not a latter-day Pullman conductor. We’ll never know. But there was a pattern, was there not?
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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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As for Harry Reid, this is an example of someone getting punished for telling the truth, but telling it in a bit of an anachronistic way. ‘Negro’ after all, is a completely distinct word from ‘nigger.’ We have the Negro Spirituals and Negro League Baseball, and the word was self-applied by blacks during Reid’s formative years. A Negro dialect certainly exists, although we’d call it something else: Ebonics, or ‘black dialect,’ most likely.
And Obama probably could not have become president if he didn’t adopt the majoritarian dialect, so Reid was only stating the obvious and I’m pretty sure I wrote substantively the same thing as some point during the primaries.
Most significantly, Reid’s import was that Obama could win and the American people could accept him. His point was not intended to belittle or dismiss, but actually the opposite. If there was any negative component it was the strange suggestion that Obama might choose to adopt a negro dialect.
The one problem as an African-American, Black, Negroe, Colored whatever that I had with the whole “negro dialect” thing is that in true literary works is the “negro dialect” the whole “massa…boss, ima gonana…” etc that denotes a way of speaking that’s ignorant or not educated.
Besides which in a off-handed way isn’t it saying that Obama is different from most black people cause he speaks “good english”. It’s kinda embracing the stereotype that Blacks speak English as a second language, and our “native” language is “ebonics” or “negro dialect”.
Still, I think what Reid said has truth, but here’s the thing, what makes a person comfortable saying what he said in the company of people he knows may not be trusted.
And if a Rep or GOP has sais the same, some libs would be ready to castrate them. Me, as I said, at 33 years old I have long gotten past the surprise that some pols other than GOP pols say bigotted things anyway.
here’s the problem. Obama is different from most black people and even most black politicians. That includes his dialect. Although his accent and choice of words may be only modestly different from someone like Elijah Cummings or Maxine Waters, it is still different.
There’s really no reason to assume that Reid was suggesting that Mel Watts and John Conyers don’t know how to speak English, but neither of them would have an easy time getting elected president because of a distinctive blackness in their dialect.
A key factor for Obama was that he very rarely ‘sounds black.’ And by that I don’t mean that he speaks well. I mean that he doesn’t have accents and markers that you’d use on the telephone to determine someone’s race.
I think the reason this was important to his prospects as a presidential candidate is somewhat similar to the reasons that Jackie Robinson was selected by Branch Rickey to be the first black MLB ballplayer. It’s hard to express, but it has to do with making the majority of white folks feel comfortable.
And that’s probably what Reid meant, and no more.
Boo:
Jackie Robinson made the majority of white folks comfortable? We all know that’s bullshit. The reason by Rickey chose Robinson was because of his intestinal fortitude. Who else would have been able to hold all that in for 2 seasons(like Rickey told him to do)? Even a lot of ballplayers of that age tried to go all Ty Cobb on Robinson(especially because Robinson played Second base). You know what’s more bothersome about Reid? Whether what he said was true or not, he didn’t say it off the record. And if he did, he said it around people that couldn’t be trusted. That would rather embarrass him. Make him look even more out of touch than he already is. I mean, lets face it. How many of us commenters/readers would use the exact same words Reid used to describe that situation? Close to none is my bet.
If it wasn’t a poor choice of words, he wouldn’t be in the world of hurt he is in. I don’t dispute it was a poor choice of words, nor that he exercised poor judgment is saying that.
Ah no Booman, Obama IS NOT different from most Black people. I have been Black all my life, and I have seen and heard many Black people who sounds like Obama, and even have some of the same history as Obama. To say that Obama is different from most Black people is too blanket a statement to make about a whole group of people.
I hear ya though, Obama is different from most Black people to white people yes, but ask yourself this, if Obama is what white people are comfortable thinking of Black people, then what do white people think of most other Blacks who are not Obama.
here’s where it gets tricky when you talka bout “blackness” when you are not black, what exactly is “distinctively Black” about Watts and Conyers.
I’m not trying to hijack the thread, but I’m really interested. To the average white person, what defines someone “distinct Blackness”. You can bet, most of the answer will be sterotypically, not factual.
I understand why the comments bother you and I hear what you are saying. But let me lay out a few points.
It would be fair to say that Obama is not like most people, period, regardless of race. He has degrees from Columbia and Harvard. So, right away, he has an elite education that surpasses what the vast majority of people enjoy. As for black people, most black people (meaning the majority of them) come up living in majority black communities, which was not the case with Barack. Even his immediate family was white. Because of this, his voice, accent, intonations, and choice of words lack anything that might mark it as coming from the black community.
As for what might make the voices of Watt or Conyers distinctively black (so that you would know they were black even on the telephone) it is hard to define. There is a whole language in the science of linguistics that I’m not conversant in. But just because I don’t have the terms to explain it doesn’t mean that I can’t make those identifications on the phone or listening to television with my eyes closed.
It’s unfortunate, but it was important to Obama’s success that he showed few signs of that distinctive blackness because those signs arouse a basically tribalistic suspicion among a significant percentage of white people. Pointing that out is not derogatory towards anyone but the white people for which it is true.
So essentially, the perception of blackness is based in what white people or the “majority” perceives as blackness. Btw, Boo, I guarantee you that if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know I was “distinctively Black” by my voice. You may detect my N’awlins accdnt, but not my “blackness”.
Anyway, I read an interesting article today that someone posted over at JJP. It’s an article published by Ebony Magazine (a African American publication) written in 1965 by Lerone Bennett. Read the whole thing, it’s an interesting read, but what’s more ironic or interesting is that it was written in 1965, but it is still true today.
I agree with your quote but I don’t agree with your “in other words.”
I would suggest to you that if anything black people are better able to identify the race of someone by their voice than white people are. Not only race, but town, county, or region of origin. If true, this is mainly because making those distinction is more important to the in-group and any out-group.
But even if that is not the case, what distinguishes someone as being white and from Wisconsin is not a different principle from what distinguishes someone as being black and from North Carolina. You can hear it without regard to the grammatical quality of the English being spoken.
Barack Obama doesn’t sound like he came from the black upper middle class and went to Howard or Spellman anymore than he sounds like Jesse Jackson or Terrell Owens or Spike Lee (who all speak very fine grammatical English).
I think we are basically kinda just running circles around each other.
We are both talking in terms of our perceptions, your’s as a member of the majority who doesn’t live this life, and mine as a member of the minorty who deals with these experiences everyday.
Your opinion is I’m sure based on some knowledge you’ve read about or discussed, but mine from a life lived and currently living. And what I’m tellin you is that yes the type of “blackenss” that Obama may or may not exhibit to white americans may be “new to you” as they say, but it’s not to me and mine.
I gotta get back to work, but this was an interesting disscussion either way.
President Obama is “different” from other blacks in that he grew up in Hawaii with white grandparents. He didn’t grow up in an urban setting or in the south if you will. However, I actually know quite a few upscale, ivy- league educated blacks so I don’t know if he’s THAT different. An upscale black world other than what some white folks saw on the The Cosby Show, is a world unknown to most America. That’s one of the reasons why people like Sally Quinn of Wapo write negative pieces about them. The Obamas came to Washington, brought all of their upscale NEGRO friends and have shut out ” official” Washington.
As far as Harry Reid goes, I think he was trying to explain the saleability of Obama. Obama would be perceived as non- threatening because he’s “light-skinned” and doesn’t use Negro dialect. However , like lamh31 said, I wouldn’t vote for Harold Ford to be dogcatcher so skin tone is not the only thing. Also, even though I don’t think Harry Reid is a racist, how exactly would you expect an educated person to speak?
if you think back on the campaign, whenever Obama would do something that signified his blackness (like the Jay-Z brush off) the press tried to make an issue out of it.
Even in tiny doses, white America recoiled from any sense of tribal affinity for the black community. Unfortunately, the fact that he rarely showed that affinity was important to his acceptance by the majority white community.
Booman, “brushing your shoulders” off is neither a Jay-Z thing, nor a Black thing. It’s a phrase as old as dirt, used by folks of every race, creed and religion, and akin to the phrase “Dust yourself off and try again”.
whether or not he was making a Jay-Z reference, look at the media’s response to it.
It just further shows how stupid the TradMed is
What? You mean Aaliyah didn’t come up with it first?
Heh. 🙂 Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. But it is funny what gets latched on to…Jay-Z says something that is as old as dirt, and somehow he’s the originator. How weird is that?
Booman Tribune ~ Casual Observation
Surely the even bigger point is that Obama is different from almost everybody else, regardless of their skin colour or cultural background. He appears to me to be almost uniquely intelligent – in a wonky way, articulate – in a rhetorical way, and emotionally empathetic – to a degree which rare in intellectually clever people. In my book ke is up there with Gandhi, MLK, JFK, Gorbachev and Mandela as one of the most uniquely gifted people of the past few generations.
Some people feel threatened by people who are so obviously more gifted than they are. Leaders of all size and shapes are generally not noted for their lack of ego and most don’t like to be “bettered” by someone with way more smarts than they have.
So I’m not surprised Obama inspires mixed emotions. The question is whether people are prepared to embrace him or feel obliged to diss him – and that says more about other people than it does about Obama.
I totally disagree with you, Booman. IMO, Obama’s tone is similar to Malcolm X’s, and we all know Malcolm “sounded black”.
Also, I was more bothered by the “light-skinned” part actually. Because I don’t care how “light-skinned” Harold Ford is, I don’t think he had a chance in hell of becoming President. The “Negro dialect” I can maybe excuse, but…
Actually, I’m gonna stop trying to dissect and defend it, it’s kinda making me more PO’d. So I’m gonna stop
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THE PRIESTHOOD BAN
Jimmy Carter, then president of the United States, wrote President Kimball, “I welcome today your announcement …. I commend you for your compassionate prayerfulness and courage in receiving a new doctrine. This announcement brings a healing spirit to the world and reminds all men and women that they are truly brothers and sisters.”
Stealing McMurrin called “it the most important day for the church of the century.”
Mormonism and Black Skin
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I said the same thing at another blog, JJP. Reid is motivated by his Mormonism as well. And let me tell you, the guy is one of those oldtimers who may not have been able to accept the 1977 revelation.
‘majoritian dialect’
pardon me, but WTF is that?
I’m sorry, but this is the kind of mess that just angers me. White folks pretending that Barack Obama was the first Black person to graduate from Harvard when W.E.B. DuBoise got his Phd from Harvard in 1895.
There were whole swaths of Black folk who were educated before the Civil Rights Movement.
Do you honestly believe that Black people walk around talking Ebonics? That you aren’t talking about a SUBSET of people?
That the overwhelming majority of BLACK people with BLACK parents IN AMERICA were raised speaking the ‘ King’s English’, and that we were liable to get hurt if we didn’t.
Sorry BooMan, this was an insult by Reid, but guess what, it’s not an insult that any other EDUCATED BLACK PERSON hasn’t heard in their lifetime.
the whole, they know you went to college and graduate/professional school, but will utter the words – to your face-
‘ you speak so well.’
you grit your teeth and say thank you, but what you want to say is..
I have 2 degrees[if not more], you idiot. what do you think I had to do in order to get them? That there’s a specific ‘ Black degree’, where they allow you to do whatever to get a degree?
Reid is also SUSPECT because of all the maneuvering and interference he did in the ILLINOIS SENATE SEAT, where it was reported how he SPECIFICALLY went after ALL THE BLACK CANDIDATES UNDER CONSIDERATION.
I believed it when it was first reported, but others gave him the ‘ benefit of the doubt’. No longer.
it is what it is.
sorry, W.E.B. DuBois.
my family is an example of the world of Black folks that a good number of Whites refuse to acknowledge.
My maternal grandmother had her masters degree BEFORE she married my grandfather in 1905.
she made sure that ALL her daughters had bachelors and masters degrees BEFORE the decision of Brown v. Board.
and my family was not unique.
there are whole swaths of educated Black people going back GENERATIONS.
Maybe the problem is with the portrayal of blacks in the media and which set or subset gets the most attention. I grew up in the north (Cleveland suburbs) and never even saw a black person until I was 17 years old. There is a crime in letting a child grow up in that kind of a vacuum, but I think there are still great big areas of the country where this might still be true. So for all they know blacks are the NBA players, the rap artists, the mug shots on the evening news.
The local news has, and has had, a brutal influence not only on how whites view blacks but on how suburbanites view cities. Simply put, a large percentage of white (and not only white) suburbanites are terrified of cities and terrified especially of encountering black people in cities. And there is no substitute for exposure to cure you of these fears.
I can tell you that living in a pretty rough black-majority area of Philadelphia and working in some of the very toughest neighborhoods of North Philly, you need to get comfortable knowing each corner and each street before you can go about your business without a degree of anxiety. But once you know the neighborhood, that anxiety subsides. Crime is real, and you need to have a three-block stare to avoid trouble in a lot of urban neighborhoods. But they aren’t anywhere near as dangerous as people think they are. Moreover, things are a lot different than they might seem. You are probably much more likely to get mugged at night in affluent Society Hill than you are in most of the gang-run corners in the highest crime neighborhoods.
After living for three years in the burbs, I don’t have the same comfort level I had when I go back to my old neighborhood. The faces are different, and I have no finger on the pulse of what’s going on. I can’t smell trouble anymore the way I used to.
It’s this lack of familiarity that breeds suspicion, and the local news makes the whole city seem like a war zone. Parts of the city are a war zone, but the combatants know each other and aren’t looking to harm suburbanites.
Another factor is that you need to be able to live with a certain degree of daily danger to feel comfortable in a city, and suburbanites just aren’t used to it. What a urbanite finds mildly disconcerting is way too much danger for most suburbanites, at least until they get inoculated.
So much to parse here. My take:
1. Why isn’t this incident seen as an indictment of how too many people in this country think? Let’s just be honest here. Why did some folks get uncomfortable when Rev. Lowry mentioned the “white, alright…black, get back” line? Because it has the unfortunate convenience of how some folks really feel.
Or to really stir the pot, why was candidate Obama seen among some as “biracial” when he described himself as African American? That he was “just as white as he is Black”? (Yes, I saw that written in the blogosphere) Reid’s statement just acknowledged the reality of what some people truly react to and/or think. It’s not the only thing, of course. Harold Ford is lighter than the President, for example, but that’s not going to give him some leg up in a future presidential race. The President could look like Taye Diggs and win, but other people’s racial preconceptions would still be out there, sub rosa, but there.
2. Why isn’t this an indictment of again, dealing in stereotypes? President and First Lady Michelle Obama ARE NOT different from other African Americans. Yes, President Obama is unique among politicians for the unique ways he applies his obvious intelligence and leadership, he’s not “different” from other African Americans. Think of JFK: his intelligence and persona may have been unique among the other politicians of his era, but that doesn’t make him “different” from other Irish Americans.
My family doesn’t share your background, Rikyrah, BUT–if I ever walked into my parent’s home sounding silly and stereotypical, I’d be in a world of hurt. Why? That’s not who we are. My parents did not do stereotypes. And quite like your family, Rikyrah, my family was not unique in that regard. There are all kinds of stories and backgrounds that are authentically Black–not stereotypes. That’s what gets lost here. And what is really grating is that there are people who refuse to see that.
3. What I find REALLY curious is that Reid is being jumped on with the quickness…quite unlike the treatment Trent Lott received initially. It was forced back into the debate by folks like Josh Micah Marshall. But these two incidents aren’t identical.
nothing to add AP. just hug co-sign
Right back atcha! 🙂 I just haven’t had time to go through and rate.
I didn’t say what it seems you think I said. Did W.E.B Du Bois speak like the majority of black people after he was through getting his degree from Harvard? But he didn’t sound like Henry Cabot Lodge either, I suspect. People’s voices give away not only their degree of education but their region of upbringing. I can tell you if someone is white and from The Bronx or white and from Brooklyn.
Play a tape of Bernie Sanders talking about baseball and I’ll tell you he’s Jewish, was raised in Brooklyn, and probably has a college education.
The only reason this is important is because this is not the case with Obama. Or, at least it would take a very trained ear to suss out his origins and upbringing. You’d know he had a higher education, though.
And why did this feature help Obama politically?
Because on both a conscious and subconscious level, signifiers of a black identity arouse suspicions in whites that a politician will look out for blacks first. This is, more than anything else, why there was a ceiling for Jesse Jackson beyond which he couldn’t go.
Pointing this out is not an endorsement of these facts. How many times did we hear Palinites and PUMAs vocalize the concern that Obama would look out only for blacks? That feeling only becomes more pronounced when a politician sends out signals of affinity or association with a minority group, whether they be subtle linguistuc signals or overt in-group cultural references.
Do you remember the computer program in one of those Jack Ryan(Tom Clancy) movies? It’s where Harrison Ford had to go to Central/South America. The computer was able to tell Ford/Jack Ryan that the guy they were looking for is Cuban .. educated on the East Coast of the US .. and so on … I guess what I am getting at .. how can you tell Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn and not Queens(as an example)?
Brooklyn vs. Queens can be a bit difficult. Brooklyn vs. the Bronx, not so much.
What most people think is a Brooklyn accent is really Queens. The Brooklyn accent is a lot softer.
“Majoritarian dialect” is not about education. It’s a somewhat crude way of describing linguistic markers that identify the speaker’s origins, perhaps including education, perhaps not. Call it “standard English”, “business English” or something else, it means the kind of impression a news anchor or other bland media figure generally makes as far as language goes. Obama could fit right in to the NPR sound without giving away any origins. Tavis Smiley would sound like New Orleans, but not necessarily black. Cornel West, whom no one would accuse of lacking education, would sound “black” to nearly every listener, unless one imagined he was a white rapper wannabe.
The sorryass fact is that an “urban black accent” tends to trigger a fear/dismissal response from a lot of whites and some blacks (Cosby, for example), at least when they’re first trying to size the speaker up. I think that’s what Reid was trying to point out: Obama passed the “test”, while, say, Jeremiah Wright wouldn’t — which I think was the whole point of the manufactured “controversy” around him: that Obama was REALLY just like Wright, as we’d find out once he was safely in the White House.
I have to wonder what you think the “is Obama black enough” back and forth was all about if not how he uses language? We are tribal and we try to figure out who’s in “our” tribe and who’s in “another”. That may be sad, but it’s reality. Reid was just acknowledging the political aspects of that, using clumsy language. It doesn’t seem so terrible that an old guy from Utah would use the same word for “African American” as ML King did, but that seems to be the real trigger for the “controversy”. To me it’s just yet more gotcha politics, signifying nothing.
yes there was.
BTW Booman, I don’t read all the lib blogs, but you are the first outta the 15 or so I read daily that has mentioned this part of the Halperin book story…well the only non-African American blog that is.
It kinda saddens me to say this, but as an African-American older than 20, nothing like this is surprising to me. I know I’m probably gonna be flamed for this, but we are kinda indoctrinated from birth not to be surprised with bigotted or uncomfortable racial statements are made by a member of the majority. It shocks you at first, but you develop a thick skin about it. We kinda grow up with an optimistic pessimist mentality about bigotry and racism. We hope for the best, but expect the worst, so when we are confronted by it, we are pissed, but we are not surprised.
In Harry Reid’s case with the use of the word “negro”, I more inclined to toss it up to age. My grandmother still called other black people she saw on tv “colored”. It’s what she was used to being called in New Orleans, all her life, so that’s what she did. Besides which, I’m not sure but does Reid have a pattern of stupid comments like this… I don’t belive so, correct me if I’m wrong.
Clinton’s comment if true, kinda rubs me wrong even wronger, not sure why, probably because of the pattern you kinda mentioned.
Anyway, it’s something you get used to..
Sorry, I’m kinda rambling…
You are telling the truth, lanh31. I like knowing what the Clintons really think of “us”.
Clinton’s comment is redolent not only of racism, but of class conceit/ I don’t which Kennedy would have found more offensive.
Which is ironic considering the Clintons are views as “poor white trash”.
And I think it’s funnier still that some folks think that class trumps race, when it clearly does not.
MLK’s speech “The Drum Major Instinct” should be required reading for everyone…
He married UP when he married Hillary.
.
Some catches lately …
Reid, a Nevada Democrat facing his own growing political problems back home these days, had once described Obama in a private conversation as “light skinned” – and one who spoke “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments,” Reid said in a statement released today after his remarks were reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."What a gossipy little book this is…filled with second and third hand accounts of conversations and incidents. Real journalists I know are weeping.
That said, Bill Clinton is a buffoon.
Test question: what’s the difference between these extensive quotes from a trash-talking, intellectually bankrupt, rumor-laden collection of useless information and a pile of steaming excrement? I can fertilize my garden with the sh*t.
But if you shred the book you can use it as mulch.
Was that about the same time btw that Bill Clinton lost South Carolina for Hillary with the same tone?
Mr. Parse-what-I-say would probably argue that forty years ago his statement would be literally true–if one omits the context of his conversation with Ted Kennedy.
This is now ancient history. Hillary lost in part because of Bill Clinton’s comments. Not to mention her sorry good-for-nothing campaign staff only redeemed because McCain’s was much much worse. That should be enough punishment for Clinton. That sorry piece of history is now behind us.
What did Clinton mean? Probably both ways of taking it. That’s worse, isn’t it.
My point , Booman, was that President Obama and Michelle aren’t that “unique” within the black community. Even President Obamas mother-in-law said after the election that there are a lot of Baracks and Michelles in our community. Meaning there are a number of educated “well-spoken”, well off black people. You can choose to discount that if you wish.
I am not discounting that. I agree with it completely. But ‘not unique’ is different from ‘most’ or ‘majority.’
It’s a raw nerve, I understand that. It’s the whole Biden ‘articulate’ thing. But the Biden and Reid comments really are addressing distinct things.
In one case, someone is expressing surprise that a black person can speak intelligently, which is plainly insulting and incredibly annoying.
In the other, a politician is expressing an opinion about what the white electorate of this country is prepared to embrace.
I think we should treat those two comments as distinct rather than conflate them.
At best — AT BEST — this is just more DC insider he’s-not-a-part-of-our-club bullshit that never even contemplates the question of what’s best for the country. It would be deeply offensive to me even if Obama were fully anglo.
I’m becoming ever further convinced that this country is at an impasse that can’t be overcome by democratic means. Therefore I think it probably won’t be overcome at all. We shall be serfs in a modern feudal state. Most of us won’t notice the incremental changes left to get us there.
I don’t think that what Reid said wasn’t true. In America, though, you can’t talk honestly about race and racism. Lighter-skinned blacks (you see, already we’re in a weird language dilemma) are more accepted than darker-skinned people. The inherent racism in the U.S. shines through.
And it’s true that someone who “speaks like you” is more “trustworthy” than someone who doesn’t. That even works when race isn’t involved.
The myths on which slavery and American racism were founded still percolate in the minds of a large number of Americans.
I’d like to think that America can get beyond these two areas of discrimination. We haven’t yet. And however Reid said it, what he said was true. Even now there are millions of Americans who will not accept that an American of African ancestry can be President.
Hi all,
I’ve been a lurker here for quite a long time. Just had to register and put in my $0.02. I was browsing through the latest Newsweek today on the newstands while seeing someone off at the airport. In light of this dustup over Reid’s and Clinton’s alleged comments, I wondered snidely to my daughter exactly why no one would demand that the linguistic test that candidate Obama needed to pass should equally apply to Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, who’s being touted as the likely successful challenger to President Obama.
So it does boil down to skin pigment doesn’t it. White presidential candidates are thought more suitable if they actually possess Regional dialects-the more southern, the more preferable, hence Bush’s fake Texas drawl, or Carter’s Georgian accent, or John Edwards’ aw shucks southern appeal, or Bill Clinton’s Arkansan raspy twang. Palin’s “Joe-six-pack” and anti-intellectualist appeal is precisely what has supposedly netted her so much of a following in red America. So it’s okay for a white candidate to wear their white tribal affect on their sleeve but not a black candidate? Yeah different strokes for different folks, truly!! Just exactly what is that White folks are afraid of? It’s funny, John Kerry and Al Gore got pilloried for sounding bland/overly intellectual, yet that was the selling point for candidate Obama?
America’s illogical ideologies of race still continue their awkward search for a raison d’etre. They failed to make sense in the 18th century and they sure flop today.
You are making too much sense. And for the record Haley Barbour is an ignorant, racist slob.
Yeah. Exactly why I wondered how Jon Meacham, one of the doyens of the beltway denizens (and editor of Newsweek) is pushing the Barbour candidacy as the “anti-Obama’ couched in a longing for a Reagan redux. It just shows how much the conservative pundits and poobahs believe that the teabagger racist tack is likely to work in the long run against this president. They are practically banking on racism to defeat this President and all the frightening demographic shift that he signals for the future.
The reason it seems to me the Establishment is so scared about this President is that other minorities might follow in his wake and upset the applecart of the power pecking order. To them it was bad enough that Bill Clinton became President, but Obama forces us all to face the real demographic future of this country and the necessary shift in power relations that portends along racial and class lines.
Was Bill Clinton ever accustomed to being waited on by black people? It doesn’t ring true to me that he would be indicating “servile”/Stepin Fetchit rather than “overeager”/Kenneth The Page. My sense is that “bringing us coffee” is an inexperience crack rather than anything racial, because Bill Clinton is not a julep-sipping plantation fantasist (like, say, Trent Lott). But I thought almost all the racial stuff imputed to Clinton was overblown.