My good friend and Cosmo Girl! magazine Senior Editor Tara Roberts covered the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. She told me that she was shocked at how few reporters from major media actually went out to talk directly to voters at events she attended. She said that, while some reporters from smaller outlets were doing the important reportage this historic election deserves, most of the big media rushed after the candidates. They didn’t take time to rush after the people who have to vote for the candidates. She also noted that, in the rare moments when well-known journalists actually mingled with real folk, so many of them are celebrities themselves, that they ended up signing autographs and answering excited questions that ordinary people threw at them.
It should be the other way around. Journalists ask questions. That is their job. They shouldn’t pose for camera phone pictures. That is not their job.
Now the conflation of hyped-up racial tension between the Clinton and Obama campaigns threatens the dignity Obama has graciously struggled to maintain. Hillary’s machine keeps moving in an unseemly direction, and the media become more mired in the muck. My sense is that Americans don’t want to be stuck there with them.
First, in a 12/2/7 press release, the site HillaryClinton.com started a media frenzy over Obama’s kindergarten essay, “I Want to Become President.”
On 12/12/7, Billy Shaheen, co-chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, suggested that Obama might be unelectable because of his admitted use of illegal drugs during his teen years. Odd given Bill’s insistence that he “did not inhale” and our current president’s 1976 DUI arrest.
Then, Bill attacked Obama’s holier-than-Hillary position on Iraq – or was it the Obama campaign? – by saying, “This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”
Now, Hillary is in the hot seat for suggesting that LBJ had more to do with the 1964 Civil Rights Act than MLK. Her campaign has gone so far as to pit Black man against Black man by passing the mic to BET founder Bob Johnson, a billionaire few folk in the African American community even respect given his exploitation of the stereotype of the hyper-sexualized Black Other.
This history-making election is degenerating into a circus, complete with minstrel performances in the side-show arena. It seems everyone – except the Black candidate – is performing race. See the clowns fanning this old air, repositioning old mirrors.
I refuse to be distracted by these sideshows.
None of this is going to help folk struggling to keep their homes. None of this is going to solve the crisis in Darfur. None of this aids a Katrina victim. None of this is going to stop a roadside bomb from killing an Iraqi child or a US soldier.
As a man I once interviewed told me, race is a smokescreen, gender is a smokescreen. I think the American people are starting to get that.
Identity politics divides and conquers Americans who might not look the same, but whose day-to-day struggles are nearly indistinguishable. It always has.
Just as brave women and men leaped the divide meant to wedge the coalitions formed between Abolitionists and Suffragists in the 1800s, and advocates for Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation in the 1900s, we now, in this millennial moment, must resist the system controllers that would focus our attention on race and gender instead of our shared condition as citizens of this country.
We must acknowledge the historical significance of this election without degenerating into specious debates. After all, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race. Race simply does not exist – except as a political construction, a social construction, a construction meant to solidify power among the elite and keep the rest of us bickering amongst ourselves.
I don’t know if members of the Clinton campaign are making innocent flubs, mistakes, and miscues while the cameras are rolling, or if, in a more sinister and calculated way, they want to force Obama’s hand and draw him out of the race-neutral stance he’s maintained, cause him to flail and lose his dignity, and then point at him and insist the Oval Office is no place for an angry Black man.
Either way, I think we all need to tune out the pundits and pollsters and insist that each candidate clearly articulates his/her plan for America’s future, for the foreclosures and the war and the displaced people around the world and from The Gulf who are suffering, and dying, who are utterly perplexed at their isolation, while sound byte specialists gab on about gobbledygook.
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Here-here Eisa! You’ve nailed it. Of course race plays a part in this election, but in the way the race is framed, not the issues. I think Hilary wants to win, and will go to the mat – slinging mud all the way – to accomplish that goal. She feels she’s entitled.
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Julia has it right, it is about entitlement. But that is what the whole elitist culture of the democratic party is wrapped in. While the Republicans can give a fuck about you (which is at least honest). The democratic party has a holier than thou mentality. They want to help you, because they believe they are smarter than you. And as long as they are on top and they are the distributors of “jobs” and “protection”. everything is fine. If you challenge them, and win, dirty little things start popping out. Like MLK played a minor role to LBJ in the civil rights movement. Expect more stuff like this from Hillary.
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One area of concern for me about Barack?s candidacy is that white America, including large parts of liberal America, don?t know history well enough and therefore can not adequately analyze the dual impact of race and gender in this country. Hillary’s comments about LBJ are quite simplistic. And people who give all the credit for civil rights to Martin Luther King are overlooking the fact that a powerful movement with many courageous leaders was behind his rise. Many of these leaders were black women, who were also the backbone of the civil rights movement. Only recently has the critical leadership of Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer been given in depth scholarly attention. The general public is still oblivious to their achievements. King and many others, black and white, put their lives on the line, had their houses blown up and lived in terror in the South. The great Fannie Lou Hamer was viciously beaten in a Winona, Mississippi jail. When she went to the 1964 Democratic Convention and told her story and challenged the seating of the all white Mississippi delegation, what did Lyndon Johnson do? He interrupted the live proceedings with a press conference, because he didn?t want the white South to desert him and the Democratic Party. They would, however, starting with Strom Thurmond changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. However progressive he was compared to white Southern politicians of his era, Johnson did what he was forced to do by a powerful movement. This is all in the history books. Also as a sign of the casual racism of his day, he was used to calling blacks ?nigger? even after he signed the Civil Rights act. This too is recorded. So forgive some of us if we are not effusive in our praise of the work of this president.
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Glad you weighed in here, Yvette!
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I feel that Obama’s appeal is highly visceral. I’ve always examined the micro “in between” facial expressions of political candidates. In a split second one can see how a facial expression is squelched or manufactured depending on the audience that is listening. I guess this disingenuous quality to the politician’s face that makes it hard for me to watch them. Obama seems to appeal because he is a man who seems to believe what he says. He appeals across party lines because he is the candidate who viscerally seems to have the most integrity. On the other hand, the fact that Obama is designated as a Black man, also may have an appeal in this election. The whole “democracy” rap the US has been using as a pretext to intervene in Iraq has little meaning when this “democracy” is imposed by country which was founded on the exploited labor of African Americans. Perhaps there are Americans (as well as the rest of the world…) who would equate the election of an African American to the Presidency of the United States with some hope for an authentic Democracy in the future.
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I assure you Barack and Hillary will not be on the ticket together. If he wins her high negatives and that she is another sitting sentor does not help him.
If she wins, Barack would not want to be her VP. The VP slot will go to someone who is either a governor or a big city mayor. Someone with experience balancing budgets, dealing with unions etc. not just legislative experience. The last sitting senator to be elected to the Presidency was JFK. It’s a tough leap.
If Barack wins big in South Caroline, look for the attacks against him to get stronger. It’s going to get ugly.
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Thanks for joining in here, Ragazza.
I don’t see an Obama Clinton ticket either. I do, however, sniff the beginnings of an Obama Edwards run. I think that would fly better in the south, and Obama had the Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast on lock.
I see John’s point, but I’m not sure Hillary is electable in the Bible Belt. They’d rather see anyone but her, I think, the way most Democrats wanted anyone but Bush.