So hey, Barack Obama played the race card yesterday. So the McCain campaign tells me, and I’m sure they’d never exploit racial divisions in American society to win a few votes.This is, of course, the worst thing the Obama campaign could do, because as everyone knows, there’s nothing worse in American society than playing the race/gender/sexual orientation/whatever card. It’s unbelievably offensive, far worse than the most pernicious racism or the most deadening misogyny. Indeed, the only reason I don’t blast Obama for this horrible, horrible offense is that, of course, there is no race card. It doesn’t exist.

The race card is a myth, a useful legend, one that racists use to shut up those who complain about racism.  This is obvious when it’s given a second’s thought. “Playing the race card” is semantically the same as “critiquing racism.” The latter, of course, is not just good, it’s important, it’s necessary.

But when racism (or sexism, or homophobia, or whatever) is critiqued, it can make those who’ve engaged in racism feel bad. After all, nobody wants to be thought of as a racist, and so rather than listen to the critique of our actions, we say that the person criticizing us is playing the race card, accusing us of being racist — and that this is a grave offense against our person.

But of course, all of us are racists — you, me, John McCain, Barack Obama — there isn’t a person in American society who isn’t affected by our long national heritage of racial degradation. It’s a part of the land here, suffused into the air we breathe. At best, one can be aware of one’s racist tendencies and work to root them out, bit by bit. But the fact is that because we are all somewhat racist, we are all capable of acting in a racist manner, even if we don’t intend to. If we are serious about not wanting to be racist, the only thing we can do is listen to those who see it, to hear and understand the critiques of our actions, to learn from them and improve in the future. It’s not a fun process — nobody likes to have the parts of them they’re not proud of drug out for public display. But the alternative — letting the racism remain unchecked, so that it can metastasize and strangle American society once again…that’s far, far worse than feeling bad about having racist tendencies.

The McCain campaign could have used this as a teachable moment. They could even have listened and defended themselves, saying, “The Obama campaign felt what we said was racist, but it was not. Here’s why.” But of course, they don’t care about racism, unless they can work to exploit it. To use it to gin up animosity toward Obama, to paint him as one of those uppity types who actually cares about racism. That is, in a word, racist. The McCain campaign doesn’t have to like it, but that’s what they are, and they appear happy to work to exacerbate racial divisions, rather than to heal them. I’m not surprised, but I also don’t need to pretend that they’re doing anything other than perpetuating racism. If that’s “playing the race card,” so be it.

You have got to be kidding me:

Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn’t give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track.

“Listen, I’m skinny but I’m tough,” Sen. Obama said.

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

You know, I’m sure this will be a problem. I mean, it’s not like being skinny is still held up as the ultimate ideal for all Americans. Being fat is the new “it” thing. Why, I understand Seattle Sutton has fled the country for more tolerant Canada, while the last health club locked its doors last week. Plus, as a fat guy, I can tell you that all fat people hate skinny people, because nobody knows better than fat people that your body type is far more important than the ideas you have, the skills you possess, or the personality that animates you.

Snark aside — no, Wall Street Journal, Obama’s skinniness is not a deal-breaker. Indeed, as anyone who has engaged in American society can tell you, it’s an asset. There’s a reason Mike Huckabee wasn’t considered a presidential contender until he had bariatric surgery lost a lot of weight through “willpower.” This nation is far from embracing the idea that one’s body type does not correlate with one’s worth as a human being — and that includes a number of fat-hating fat people, who will be happy to tell you at length why Obama’s skinniness is a strength.

As for me, I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to care whether Obama was fat, thin, or trapezoidal. I just want a president who will wind down the Iraq war and not set the rights of women and the GLBTQQ community back 30 years. And given my choices, I think that I’ll pull the lever for Obama, whatever he weighs.

(Via Kevin Drum)

1) I’m not convinced McCain’s campaign purposely played the “sexually available white women” card. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t; it doesn’t seem like a slam-dunk case to me either way.

2) But it doesn’t matter much. Even if the racist connotations weren’t intentional, they still reflect the McCain staff’s gross insensitivity or indifference to racist connotations. (If McCain’s staff included lots of Black people who give a damn about racism, this ad would have died on the drawing board.)

3) It’s not coincidence that our two most famously vapid celebrities are women. Britney and Paris are so famous for vapidity and partying because the media is extremely eager to trumpet those traits in young female celebrities (making them even more famous — a vicious cycle), not because no male celebs are vapid partiers.

4) It’s ironic that McCain’s ad — which presents the least substantive argument (”Obama is like Britney and Paris! So vote McCain!”) of any political ad so far this election — suggests that Obama is the vapid one. Got that plank out of your eye yet, John?

UPDATE: Bean sent me this link, to a BBC column about a survey showing that the most-hated celebrities are women.

I was disappointed back during the primary when Barack Obama didn’t call out the misogyny swirling around the campaign. Mostly, I was disappointed for the same reason I was disappointed in Hillary Clinton for not calling out racism — both misogyny and racism are evils in our society, and neither campaign should have been willing to play footsie with racist or misogynistic ideas.

But I also understood at the time that Obama would inevitably face misogynist attacks of his own. I know, it seems impossible, given that Obama’s not a woman, but the GOP has been deriding male Democrats as overly feminine from time immemorial, or at least 1964.  (Female Democrats, of course, aren’t feminine enough, except when they’re too feminine.)

We already saw McCain trot out his “celebrity” ad, which unquestionably tried to portray Obama as vain, shallow, and superficial, but mostly, as a woman. That’s not accidental:

Staying very personal, the McCain campaign responds to Obama’s suggestion that Republicans will attack his unusual name and his race:

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, before trying to link the attack back to offshore drilling.

Hysterical, you say? Hmm…now there’s something about that word that I seem to remember. What is it?

Etymology: New Latin, from English hysteric, adjective, from Latin hystericus, from Greek hysterikos, from hystera womb; from the Greek notion that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus

Oh, right: hysteria is not just an attack that one is angry, it’s an attack that one is irrationally angry, like women get.¹ Of course, Obama’s also “fussy” (homophobic insult) and “superfluous” (incoherent insult).

Point is, Barack Obama’s not a real man, because real men don’t complain when their presidential campaign is compared to meaningless celebrity gossip. I’m sure if someone pointed out that John McCain went on Saturday Night Live and hosted the show — and that like his campaign, it was one bad joke after another — well, McCain would just smile and nod. Or kill someone. Either way, it would be a manly response.

1. Silly women, getting all upset about institutionalized misogyny. (back)

So this ad makes the connection between Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Barack Obama:

As Josh Marshall notes, this one’s a two-fer: it sets Obama up first as a fey celebrity, one who’s facile and shallow. But by juxtaposing white, female Britney and white, female Paris with black, male Barack, we also get a nice echo of the Harold Ford “call me” ad — a reminder that as president, Barack Obama will be able to sleep with all of our white women, including the famous ones.

It’s a not-so-subtle playing of the racist card by the McCain camp. I wish I could say I was surprised.

So, Ted Stevens, you having a good day?

A federal grand jury has indicted longtime Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, on corruption charges after more than a year’s investigation, a federal law enforcement official has confirmed to The Times’s David Johnston.

[…]

Just a year ago, federal agents raided Mr. Stevens’ home following questions about renovations at the home. A few months before that, an Alaska businessman Bill J. Allen admitted to bribery, and in court papers acknowledged making $243,000 in possibly illegal payments to a state lawmaker identified only as “Senator B.” That abbreviation referred to Senator Ted Stevens’s son, Ben Stevens.

For reasons I’m unclear about, Andrea Mitchell is saying on MSNBC that this is news “no one could have predicted.” That is true, if for some reason you haven’t been paying any attention whatsoever to the sprawling, ongoing corruption in Alaska.

More to come, I’m sure.

I find this to be utterly hilarious:

The Tax Policy Center prepared an interesting report (pdf) this week, noting the key differences between the economic policies articulated by John McCain and the economic policies presented by John McCain’s presidential campaign. There’s a bit of a gap — to the tune of $2.8 trillion (that’s “trillion,” with a “t”).

[…]

How does the McCain campaign respond to this? As it turns out, hilariously.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, told Slate, “[McCain] has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.”

Got that? If we want to better understand John McCain’s economic policies, we should overlook what John McCain says about his economic policies. McCain’s “official” positions don’t come from McCain.

And how could they? I mean, it’s just crazy to assume that just because John McCain says something that he actually means it! That would be insanity.

I used to have some respect for John McCain, back about eight years or so ago. Oh well.

Sean Tevis, a centrist (ugh) Kansas Democrat running for the House of Reps, has a page asking for people to donate $8.34 cents to his campaign — and the page is done as a homage to the comic strip XKCD. It’s not as funny as the real XKCD, but it’s pretty amusing. (One tip, Sean: To really get the XKCD style, the hidden titles of the images should be secondary punchlines.)

I hope he wins, partly because he’d be replacing a Republican, but primarily because I want more funny geeks in national office.

(Thanks to Bean for pointing this out to me.)

I disagree with virtually every person I respect in the political blogosphere. Which certainly makes me realize that I could be mistaken on this one.

Nonetheless, here’s my take:

1) I don’t think mockery of racist fear-mongering is the same as racist fear-mongering.

I realize, of course, that plenty of white people use racist images and try to cover it up by claiming to have been making fun of the racism. There is a universe of stupid lynching “satirical” images, blackface, and all the rest which are really just recycling racist images for the fun of it, and which should be condemned. (And have been, on this blog.)

But I don’t think that it follows that racist images should never be mocked. In this case, the fact that the cover’s images are so specific to particular news stories, and to this particular moment in history, makes a difference to me. It’s not a white jackass reveling in an excuse to finally photoshop blackface, with basically no connection between the image used and the image’s target; it’s a very specific take on the specific racist, xenophobic undercurrents in this year’s election.

2) I don’t think it matters that some idiotic right-wingers will fail to understand that this image mocks their beliefs. Or at least, I don’t think that’s reason enough to condemn this image. Jeff, do you really think that all liberals should base what we say on whether or not the stupidest people in the world could misunderstand?

3) Jake Tapper, in an op-ed that recycles right-wing cliches about liberals (we all live on the upper east side of Manhattan and consider our intellects superior), says that this cover is “a recruitment poster for the right-wing.”

Does Tapper think that if only the New Yorker hadn’t published this cover, the right wing would lack for recruits?

UPDATE: Jeff replies.

Via Matt Bors. Larger image here.

Matt also linked to this one-page history of the Iraq War by Joel Pett, which does some really cool work blending visuals from panel to panel.

Lots of folks have been linking to this Frank Rich column, and rightly so:

But as we know from our Groundhog Days of 2008, a fictional campaign narrative, once set in the concrete of Beltway bloviation, must be recited incessantly, especially on cable television, no matter what facts stand in the way. Only an earthquake — the Iowa results, for instance — could shatter such previously immutable story lines as the Clinton campaign’s invincibility and the innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate.

Our new bogus narrative rose from the ashes of Mrs. Clinton’s concession to Mr. Obama, amid the raucous debate over what role misogyny played in her defeat. A few female Clinton supporters — or so they identified themselves — appeared on YouTube and Fox News to say they were so infuriated by sexism that they would vote for Mr. McCain.

Now, there’s no question that men played a big role in Mrs. Clinton’s narrow loss, starting with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mark Penn. And the evidence of misogyny in the press and elsewhere is irrefutable, even if it was not the determinative factor in the race. But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became “angry white women” once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That’s why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence.

That said, lots of feminists — and not only those who supported Clinton in the race — remain pissed off about the level of misogyny Clinton faced during the race. And rightly so.

And many anti-racist feminists and womanists remain pissed off at how many (not all) Clinton-supporting feminists — and Clinton herself — minimized or denied racism during the primary race. And rightly so.

We shouldn’t say that we have to heal these divisions before the election. Because, you know, that’s not going to happen. These divisions are deeper and more enduring than a single election cycle, and will take more than six months to heal.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t elect Obama rather than McCain in the meanwhile, of course. But that’s the sideshow, not the main focus. Fighting racism and sexism is important for its own sake, not because there’s an election coming up.

(Disclosure: In case folks are wondering, I will quite likely be voting for Cynthia McKinney — although I’d vote for Obama if I lived in a swing state.)

P.S. Check out Michelle Obama Watch, if you haven’t already.

Via Kate at Shakesville, Sarah Haskins’ “Target Women: Suffrage” makes fun of the rather obvious, and similar, ways Obama and McCain are trying to court “female voters” and “Clinton voters,” two overlapping categories that are too often talked about as if they were the same. “The strategy seems to be just stick yourself in the middle of a bunch of women, and it’s almost like you are one!”

Makes me wonder how the candidates would court Black voters had Clinton won the primary. It might have been the first election in which the Democratic nominee was eager to be seen photographed in the middle of a bunch of Black people.

(By the way, another entry in Haskins’ “Target Women” series, Yogurt, is brilliant.)

McCain vs McCain.

Apart from agreeing with the political point, I like the visual design — much better than others of the genre I’ve seen.

Curtsy: Pandagon.

First, Camille Paglia: An inch of perspective gained vs. the mile of perspective lacked:

Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He’s a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He’s “not that bright”; he can’t talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It’s gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

And I know quoting Townhall columnists is just too easy, but this is amazing even for Townhall:

An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.

Via G Spot and Shakesville.

I didn’t know it would feel this bad. I didn’t know it would feel this personal. I’m all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. […]

Sexism is hard to see because most of it is so petty we don’t want to mention it. Nutcracker thighs? A novelty like that seems beneath contempt. But it isn’t one small offense that does women in — it’s the steady accretion of many offenses. It’s death by a thousand cuts. Even mentioning the problem seems ungracious. As women, we’re supposed to specialize in graciousness. And there isn’t a gracious way to talk about sexism. Perhaps there is no way to talk about sexism at all — which is the way sexists want it.

I will work my tail off for President Obama. We need a Democratic in the White House more than ever. But I can’t help feeling that we’ve buried a topic that needs unearthing. Please, Mr. Obama, turn your attention to sexism and tell us how you plan to address it. Then we can all be gracious with a good conscience.

I agree with Jong about the death of a thousand cuts, and on how sexism is made “unspeakable.” But I disagree with her on one point: I don’t believe Clinton was our “last chance” to see a woman elected President.

One thing I’ve been certain of my whole life is that no Jew could ever be elected President. The success of Obama and of Clinton (who just barely lost, and who probably would have won if she had opposed the Iraq war, or if she hadn’t listened to Mark Penn) has made me rethink that. I don’t think that racism, or sexism, or for that matter anti-semitism, have ceased to be barriers. But they’re no longer the insurmountable barriers they once were. Clinton was the first viable female candidate for President; but she won’t be the last.

Via Attempts.

Let me start by asking a question. Did anyone see Clinton’s, McCain’s, and Obama’s Tuesday night speeches in their entirety?

I watched Clinton and Obama both, but I missed McCain. One thing that struck me about Clinton and Obama is that I didn’t notice either one of them make note of the historic significance of having the first black nominee for President on a major party ticket. In contrast, both of them noted the groundbreaking campaign by Hillary Clinton, arguing that she was blazing a path for women, but I didn’t hear the same for Obama. Isn’t that an interesting distinction between racial politics and gender politics? The colorblind ideology silences almost any public discussion of racism by black candidates, who are vying for white votes. In contrast, we don’t have as much silence on the gender front (from the candidates). That has been a fairly consistent pattern in this Presidential election over the past few months. I’m not saying racism or sexism is a greater barrier to being elected President, but I think it is clear that they operate in different ways.

Furthermore, any complicated analysis that examines the interactions and intersections of race, gender, age, sexuality, and class are almost always missing from pundits and candidates analysis. I remember the point in the election when Hillary Clinton talked about getting pushed around by the boys (apparently it was on the Ellen DeGeneres show). While I can relate to being pushed around by the boys and having that make me stronger, I don’t believe for one minute that Hillary was being pushed around by any black boys. I know I sure wasn’t. I was getting pushed around by the whites boys who I went to school with. They were all white, presumably heterosexual¹, and from class backgrounds remarkably similar to my own. I never heard any TV pundits point this out–Clinton wasn’t being pushed around by black boys.

All that said, why do you think there is a difference in a candidate’s ability to talk about his or her groundbreaking accomplishments in relation to race and gender? Do you think the political realm is exceptional in this way? Or do you things may be different in other fields? Why do you think it is so difficult to have a discussion that captures the intersections and complexities of various forms of social inequality?

1. Some of them may not have been heterosexual, but I definitely could say that the boys that had the most normative gender presentations and were able to create a perceived heterosexual identity were the most likely to be the ones I argued with. (back)

From Ezra:

Towards the end of the 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Dr. John Wane Prentice, played by Sydney Poitier, sits down with his fiance’s white father, played by Spencer Tracy. “Have you given any thought to the problems your children will have?” Tracy asks. “Yes, and they’ll have some…[But] Joey feels that all of our children will be President of the United States,” replies Poitier. “How do you feel about that?” asks Tracy, looking skeptically at the black man in front of him. “I’d settle for Secretary of State,” Poitier laughs.

Written in the late-1960s, the exchange was, indeed, laughable. The Civil Rights Act had been passed three years prior. Two years before, the Watts riots had broken out, killing 35. Martin Luther King Jr. would be assassinated a year later. But here we are, almost exactly 40 years after theatergoers heard that exchange. The last two Secretaries of State were African-American and, as of tonight, the next president may well be a black man. John Prentice’s children would probably still be in their late-30s.

The rest of Ezra’s post is sometimes a little too hurrah-hurrah for me, since I think in many ways black and white Americans still are too often living in two nations. But I really liked the passage quoted above.

Hilzoy has written a great post responding to Ferraro’s latest, racist op-ed. Go check it out.

Hilzoy also points to this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in Slate:

There is peculiar bit of jujitsu that white public figures have employed recently whenever they’re called to account for saying something stupid about black people. When the hard questions start flying, said figure deflects them by claiming that any critical interrogation is tantamount to calling them a racist, which they most assuredly are not.

[List of various racist statements by public figures, who then said it was just crazy to use the “R” word, snipped.]

It gives me no joy to report that Geraldine Ferraro has now applied to join the ranks of the obviously nonracist. I was 8 when she ran for vice president and vaguely aware that a party that would promote a woman for an executive office might be a party that would one day give a kid like me a fair shake. Thus I’ve retched while watching Ferraro beeline to any television studio that would have her, flaunting her rainbow bona fides, and claiming that she’s being attacked “because she’s white” and demonized as a racist. […]

The bar for racism has been raised so high that one need be a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party to qualify. Had John McCain said that Hillary Clinton was only competitive in the presidential race because she was a woman, there’d be no dispute over whether the comment was sexist. And yet when the equivalent is said about a black person, it’s not only not racist, but any criticism of the statement is interpreted as an act of character assassination.

Aaargh!

Ta-Nehisi is one of my must-read bloggers, and the point about the raising of the bar for “racism” is right on target. It’s sucks that he detracted from his article with a single sentence of needless oppression olympics - especially since on his own blog, he’s frequently argued against such comparisons.

He continues:

In some measure, the narrowing of racism is an unfortunate relic of the civil rights movement, when activists got mileage out of dehumanizing racists and portraying them as ultra-violent Southern troglodytes. Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they’d ever met would do such a thing. But most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There’s nothing sensationalistic about redlining or job discrimination.

This is something I’ve seen more often than I can count. People’s logic goes like this:

1) Racists are monsters in their hearts.

2) I know that in my heart, I’m not a monster.

3) Therefore, I can’t be racist.

4) How dare you call me a racist!

You can pretty much replace “racist” with “sexist” or “homophobe” or any sort of bigot, and the above “logic” will continue to be played out in thousands of conversations every day.

For example, I recently read this painful exchange between two great Canadian cartoonists, Dave Sim and Chester Brown. I say it was painful because Sim was at one time an important role model for me. Since then, he’s become a belligerent misogynist, who argues (among other things) that women are intellectually inferior to men.

Brown — a Toronto cartoonist and friend of Sim’s who has stood by Sim for years — argued, as nicely as he possibly could, that Sim’s views meet “the common usage definition” of misogyny. Sim responded:

In other words you think I’m the gender equivalent of a racist. This is what I’ve come to realize: that people genuinely believe that I’m the worst imaginable thing (literally: a non-person, a sub-human) in our society. That being the case the only honorable thing is to withdraw from society completely and limit my contact with society to necessities (my rep at Diamond, people I buy food from). Would you associate with anyone who thought you were a subhuman? […]

RE: Visits to Toronto…Would you associate with anyone you thought were a subhuman?

Hard to imagine a clearer-cut case of “I can’t be a bigot, because I’m not a monster” logic.

[This guest post is written by David Schraub, reprinted with permission from The Debate Link.]

Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins is one of the most important sex discrimination cases in recent history. Ann Hopkins was denied partnership with the Price Waterhouse accounting firm. Testimony established that she was caught in a double-bind: while the general culture of PW demanded a sort of hyper-masculinity to succeed, when Hopkins attempted to emulate this norm, she was castigated for being insufficiently feminine. It was ruled that this bind constituted actionable sex discrimination. This situation exists in broader culture as well: society articulates the routes to success in male terms, but when women attempt to follow them they find that traditional gender norms are strictly held against them. While everyone is to some degree boxed in by social conventions, women have a far smaller box to play in than men do.

I was reminded of Price Waterhouse and the more general ailment it signifies when reading this editorial by Margaret M. Russell and Stephanie M. Wildman. They are answering the charge that women supporting Obama represents a sort of betrayal of the sisterhood, and point out some reason why women might legitimately prefer Obama over Clinton. One passage stuck out at me, though:

We value his explicit and repeated emphasis on the language of diplomacy to solve problems, including his own; conversely, Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran, as well as her metaphors of Rocky Balboa and boxing gloves, leave us cold.

I find this distressing, because it seems clear to me that Clinton has been pressured into adopting these tropes specifically because she’s female. Certainly, the “man card” form of identity politics is nothing new in American elections, but there’s a reason that Clinton is not the one challenging it, just as there’s a reason Nixon was the one to go to China and not LBJ. I’d love to push political deliberation beyond the current “who can down more shots at the bar” standard, but Clinton can’t press the issue too much because she’s a woman — she’s ultimately the target that these patriarchal norms are designed to suppress. A male candidate might be able to effectively critique these norms from the inside, because his success would performatively indicate that men can still succeed under the new regime. A female critique directly threatens the male privilege these norms are supposed to protect, making backlash inevitable. Hence, women trying to succeed in a patriarchal world often times are forced to prove they are “one of the guys”, rather than demonstrate that things can go just as well even if she remains proudly a gal.

In such a world, criticizing Clinton for adapting the classical male tropes that we typically demand our politicians adhere to represents one of the key enforcement mechanisms of sexism. It’s like when Barack Obama was being indicted for not being enough of a “fighter” — he has to adopt the soaring, conciliatory posture that he does because if he shows the slightest bit of passion he immediately will be cast as the “angry Black man.” At that point, criticizing him for being not-John-Edwards enough totally misses how racism operates in public context. Likewise with Clinton. That patriarchal structure forces her into postures that are not to our preference is not a fair indictment of her — it blames the victim for the crimes of the perpetrator.

In comments, there’s been discussion of Clinton’s recent citing of Bobby Kennedy’s death.

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”

(Huffpost has the video).

I don’t think Clinton was implying that she should stay in the race in case Obama gets assassinated. I think she was saying that there’s nothing especially unusual about a democratic primary lasting until June, and it doesn’t prevent Democrats from winning the general election.

So it was a gaffe — an unusually tactless gaffe, one which Clinton has made more than once. (I’m sure Clinton supporters who said, after “bittergate,” that a bad gaffe shows a candidate is unready to be President will stick by that position this week.) But it wasn’t Clinton hoping that Obama will be shot.

Ta-Nehsi agrees that it was a gaffe, but adds:

This is why it’s foolish to compare racism and sexism. Hillary and some [of] her blind-ass feminist supporters have asserted that there has been no racism in this campaign, or none when compared to racism. But Barack Obama had to get Secret Service protection before any candidate in history. I wonder if that has to do with racism. Part of this is our fault as we’ve allowed the definition of racism to devolve into the spectacular–the Rodney King tape or a Don Imus rant.

But the ugliest aspects are the things you don’t see, or don’t care to see. There is no American tradition of assassination in the feminist community. The sort of violence that consistently hung over Civil Rights workers, and ultimately got Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, never hung over Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Again I think Hillary simply made a mistake. But I also think were she from my side of the tracks, a place where the assassination of black public figures has altered whole lives, she wouldn’t have said something that stupid. Ditto for Steinem, who if she’d ever spent any significant time around black folks, would know that there are forces which are just as restricting as gender. I still don’t think Clinton realizes what she said–she apologized to the Kennedy’s, but not to Obama. The blindness is strong in that one.

If you’re like me, your back may have reflexively gone up at the comment about “some blind-ass feminist supporters,” but frankly he’s right, as long as you remember that he said “some,” not “all.”

On Shakesville, one of my favorite blogs,¹ a few of the writers have been arguing that Clinton has faced much more bigotry than Obama, but now things are evening out. For instance, in comments Kate (who, I want to emphasize, I’m a total fanboy of) wrote:

…Now that everyone in the media has agreed Clinton has zero shot at the nomination, it’s safe to start running the anti-Obama crap they’ve been sitting on. They didn’t want to risk accidentally tanking him and letting the nom tip to her, but now that they’re sure he’s got it, they can let loose. (Never mind that he doesn’t actually have it yet.)

As I said at Shakesville, they haven’t been sitting on anti-Obama crap. The hundreds of times Farrakhan has been mentioned in the media is racist anti-Obama crap. The Wright story was racist anti-Obama crap. The “but how would he do among WHITE voters” concern trolling — with its implication both that Appalachian voters are all White voters, and the implication that black voters somehow don’t count (hence no need to worry about Clinton’s complete tanking among Black voters) is racist anti-Obama crap. The constant positioning of Obama as a scary, non-American “other,” from the flag pin “issue” to last week’s Washington Post editorial claiming that Obama lacks the “blood” and “heritage” to be President, is racist anti-Obama crap.

(And I didn’t even mention bowling.)

With all due respect, Kate, racism against Obama hasn’t just suddenly popped up in the last week or two. Like misogyny against Clinton, it’s been going on all along.

* * *

To be fair, I’ve occasionally seen Obama supporters claim that anti-Obama racism has been a bigger problem than anti-Clinton sexism — most famously when Reverend Wright said that Clinton has never been called “nigger,” to imply she hasn’t faced bigotry. (How often has Obama been called “cunt“?) But, at least in what I’ve read, Clinton supporters have made this claim much more often — and unfortunately, Clinton herself has made the same claim.

(See also — on the general topic, not at all directed at Kate — No More Mister Nice Blog’s “The fact that you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”)

1. And a blog that has consistently posted anti-racist commentary about the election. (back)

The Clinton campaign is, in effect, proposing that Michigan should have a two-stage voting system.

Stage one: Voters of all races are allowed to vote. But only Clinton’s Michigan supporters (who are overwhelmingly white) get to vote for their candidate. The candidate who the overwhelming majority of blacks support is not be on the ballot, but somehow Clinton supporters don’t think this makes election results illegitimate.

Fortunately, everyone — even Hilary Clinton — agrees that these votes will never count for anything. It’s a purely symbolic election. So no one bothers getting in a big fight over it.

Stage two: Remember when everyone agreed that the votes in stage one were symbolic, and wouldn’t count for anything? Those votes should now be used to determine how the majority of Michigan delegates vote, according to Clinton.

The remaining minority of delegates will be “uncommitted.” This means that both candidates get to compete for these delegates — even though 100% of the voters who voted for “uncommitted” chose to vote for no one at all rather than voting for Clinton.

How is it fair for Clinton to have two bites at the apple, while Obama gets only one? How is it fair for Clinton to get even a single “uncommitted” vote, when the one thing most clearly intended by an “uncommitted” vote was “not Hilary Clinton”?

More importantly, the effects of this are racist. About 25% of Michigan’s Democratic voters are Black — and about 70% of those voters chose to vote for “uncommitted.” In effect, the candidate preferred by white voters is given two bites; the candidate preferred by Black voters is given only one bite. In effect, Black votes in Michigan are worth less than white votes in Michigan.

And yet, that is the solution preferred by Jeralyn, and Zuzu, and the Clinton campaign. I’m not saying these folks have racist intentions; but lack of racist intentions doesn’t make a racist outcome acceptable.

The majority of “uncommitted” delegates should be assigned to Obama. This isn’t as good a system as a fair election — but a fair election is no longer an option. (It’s worth noting that Clinton was opposed to holding a new, fair election.) And it’s not as unfair as assigning 100% of committed delegates to Clinton is.