PC Petard
Hoists Hill as she goes negative on a black man. Politico:
A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.
The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they’ve drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians.
“A cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements,” said Obama spokeswoman Candice Tolliver, who said that Clinton would have to decide whether she owed anyone an apology.
Pues, no se olvide “El Guacamole y Los Chips” … que racista y condescendiando! Tmabien otro comenta muy ge’nero-insensitivo sobre los Americanos sin documentacion.
Meanwhile, from the right, an inconvenient truth is noted. Karen Hughes at TIME:
Clinton’s biggest message problem is not merely the fact that she finds herself on the wrong side of the change-versus-experience divide. Her biggest problem is that the experience she’s touting is exactly the experience that many voters want to change. The authoress of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” charge is not the candidate to bring left and right together and bridge the hyper-partisan divides of Washington. Yet that’s the Hillary Clinton that her campaign has been evoking.
More from NYT on the Clinton racial flap:
In a call on Friday to Al Sharpton’s nationally syndicated talk radio show, Mr. Clinton said that his “fairy tale” comment on Monday about Senator Barack Obama’s position on the Iraq war was being misconstrued, and that he was talking only about the war, not about Mr. Obama’s overarching message or his drive to be the first black president.
“There’s nothing fairy tale about his campaign,” Mr. Clinton said. “It’s real, strong, and he might win.”
Mr. Clinton’s fairy tale line and a comment by Mrs. Clinton that some interpreted as giving President Lyndon B. Johnson more credit than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights laws have disturbed African-Americans, who saw them as unfair and diminishing the role of civil rights activists. The frustration comes as a Jan. 26 Democratic primary looms in South Carolina, where up to half of the Democratic electorate could be black.
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, said this week that he was disappointed in the comments, a worrisome matter for the Clintons since an endorsement of Mr. Obama by Mr. Clyburn could carry weight in the primary.
On Friday evening, Mr. Clyburn, who is traveling overseas, issued a statement saying he intended to remain neutral in the early race. Mr. Clyburn, who aides said spoke with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, said he wanted to make sure all candidates had an equal opportunity.
“I encourage the candidates to be sensitive about the words they use,” Mr. Clyburn said “This is an historic race for America to have such strong, diverse candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.”
“Fairy tale” … highly insensitive racially charged terminology! Given that Obama, if elected, would be the president with the least political, government and/or executive experience in living memory, and the competition is being told to shut up on the grounds of “equal opportunity,” it’s almost like they’re trying to turn him into America’s first affirmative-action president.
Here’s the background on Bill’s racially insensitive “fairy tale” remark:
Mr. Clinton, in his radio interview, disputed any notion that he had been impugning Mr. Obama personally.
He said he was addressing a specific issue that, he believed, had not been given sufficient scrutiny: Mr. Obama’s position on Iraq and a statement by Mr. Obama in 2004 that he could not say how he would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate, though he did not believe the case for war had been made.
Mr. Clinton said the 2004 view was at odds with Mr. Obama’s position that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, has always been against the war. “I said that story is a fairy tale,” Mr. Clinton said. “Now that doesn’t have anything to do with my respect for him as a person or his campaign. I have gone out of my way not to express any personal disrespect for him and his campaign.”
You’d think the Obama camp could make more mileage out of the rank hypocrisy of Bill Clinton accusing other people of pushing fairy tales, rather than letting other people play the race card.
Mr. Obama’s campaign said Mr. Clinton was engaging in revisionist history about his record on the war.
There’s a start. In other hate crime news, here’s Driscoll on Sharpton, and Riehl on Cuomo. Shuck and jive? Never mind the lefty racism … damn ,those people are having a bad week … that guy needs to be a little less square when he’s trying to be hip.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:13 am Comments (7) on Saturday, January 12, 2008
7 Responses to “PC Petard”
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January 12th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Blacks Turning on Clintons?
Several prominent black leaders are assailing Bill and Hillary Clinton for their use of racially insensitive language in their campaign against Barack Obama, Ben Smith reports for The Politico.
A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he…
January 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am
[...] Jules Crittenden has a good roundup. [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 11:27 am
…The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement
That’s incomplete without noting the context in which Hillary brought up MLK.
Her real point was.that it took a President to geterdone meaning, to pass Civil Rights Legislation.
That would one Lyndon Baines Johnson, most of whose career as a Texas legislator was spent thwarting civil rights initiatives.
But LBJ saw some writing on the wall, and never say the man wasn’t creative or adaptive when it came to furthering his position.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Oh, so now the supposedly monolithic black voters are going for Obama, when it appears he’s been dissed by the Clintons on the matter of race? Or is this the media latching onto the race card because they’ve been treating him with kid gloves because of his race?
January 12th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I have no idea :-), but for an electoral cycle that is supposed to be about “issues” and differing opinions on policy as to how to proceed and shape the future of this country (et al. and etc.)…
…we’re sure yakking a helluva lot about one candidate’s race and another candidate’s gender.
Maybe the notion that we’ve transcended such (limiting) obsessions is just pie in the sky stuff.
Ya think ?
January 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden is amused. [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
“You’d think the Obama camp could make more mileage out of the rank hypocrisy of Bill Clinton accusing other people of pushing fairy tales, rather than letting other people play the race card.”
PC politics allows one to appeal to the emotions, by-passing the mind completely. It’s just so much easier–and dishonest.
Just an aside: Does this mean that Bill isn’t black anymore?