I promised to stop with the politicking on here but…well I’m a liar. Actually I believe this is an important enough post to stick it here. And the best part is, I didn’t even write it.
*****
When Obama won Wisconsin for his 11th straight primary victory, many analysts said the race was over. Facing insurmountable odds her aides pleaded with her to resign.
But, to paraphrase Robert Frost, Hillary chose the road less traveled. She chose to fight.
She called Obama a plagiarist, a right-winger, a liar, a left-winger, an elitist, a snob and “out-of-touch.” She sold her soul to Richard Mellon Scaife, to Fox News, to Rush Limbaugh. She played the race card, the gender card, the fear car, and the hick card. She alienated the black community, the activist base, economists, academics, and half the United States (but only the States that “didn’t matter” of course). She sold fear: ominous 3 A.M. phone calls, the great depression, and Osama bin-Laden. She threatened to obliterate Iran, to dismantle OPEC, and name dropped 9/11. She gulped beer, pumped gas and shot whiskey. She loaned herself $11 million dollars and racked-up $10 million more in debt. Worst of all, she shopped her plump promises for shriveled platitudes: $30 in false tax relief to a public $5 trillion in debt.
And now, three months later, at the tail end of a campaign fraught with unnecessary infighting, soul-selling, name calling, party betrayal, and reputation trashing, what did she get? What did she gain for taking that “road less traveled by”?
A net loss of two delegates (381 to Obama’s 383).
She has made no difference.
*****
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Atomic Punk
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The Indypendent // May 7, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Obama’s Race Against Race
The Indypendent
A black man runs from a howling crowd. If he’s caught he’ll be torn apart. If he reaches sanctuary he’ll be loved. This ritual is the Sacred Lynching. It’s a scene from Olaf Stapledon’s science fiction book, The First and Last Men. Set in the future, humanity has mixed and few people are “white” or “black,” and the ritual is a nostalgic celebration of racism in a post-racial world. It resembles our own supposed post-racial politics, and I see Senator Barack Obama as that last black man on earth trying to outrun our media mob.
And the mob tries. At ABC’s Democratic primary debate in Philadelphia, hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos tied trivia around Obama’s feet. What about your angry black pastor? Are you patriotic? Are you a friend of a Weathermen terrorist? Obama questioned their questions until they looked absurd. The audience caught his cue and afterwards, when the cameras blinked off, they heckled the hosts.
The media chase Obama because, if he wins the presidential race, he’ll break the last American color line, which is also the line between our repressed history and our collective consciousness. A nation, just like an individual, will repress images and ideas that conflict with its self-image. The violence that created who we are — enslavement of Africans, indigenous peoples marched off their land, workers hanged for unionizing — contradicts our self-image as the greatest nation on earth, so our media-represses it.
To read the full article: http://www.indypendent.org/2008/04/25/obama%e2%80%99s-race-against-race/
Ben K // May 7, 2008 at 9:56 pm
She isnt gonna drop out until at least WVA and KY have voted.
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