Geraldine Ferraro is old. Seventy-three years old. Old enough to have run for VP under Walter Mondale.
Old enough to know better.
Geraldine Ferraro told a reporter for that bastion of newspapers of the local L.A. scene, The Daily Breeze, (a site so important it requires a subscription!), that:
If Obama was a white man he wouldn’t be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.
Hrm… if he were a white man named John O’Bama, an Irish Protestant, from Chicago politics, with the same lanky figure and looks, the same amazing oratory skills, the same fundraising ability, the same background… would he be where he is today….
She then refused to apologize or recognize the sheer stupidity of what she said, and made matters worse:
She then had the SHEER BALLS to claim people were making a big deal about this because she’s white:
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”
Well, it’s snarky, to be honest. We can do snark. Here’s Goon lapse:
Poor white people, always getting challenged by the media when they say something atrociously racist
It wasn’t an off-the-cuff statement, or one given only to a private audience, either. Here she is saying the same thing on John Gibson’s show a couple of weeks before:
And it turns out? She said the same thing about Jesse Jackson back in 1988!
Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his “radical” views, “if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”
Clearly, there’s a pattern…
Oh, sigh. It gets worse, folks.
Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black — coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness” to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview — indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed.”
David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. “When you wink and nod at offensive statements you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” said Axelrod.
“I dont agree with that, and I think its important that we try to stay focused on issues that matter to the American people,” she said. “And both of us have had supporters and staff members who’ve gone over the line and we have to rein them in and try to keep this on the issues. There are big differences between us on the issues - lets stay focused on that.”
And Ferraro responds, taking another huge bite of her foot:
“I do think this was a mistake on part of the Obama campaign,” she said in an interview with NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, RI. “They didn’t have to do this, and they did it to hurt Hillary. I just think that’s bad. I think it’s bad business, and I think it’s bad politics. I was accused of being divisive. I think those tactics are divisive.”
Saying she “was talking to the facts,” Ferraro stressed she did not make a mistake and was not the one who brought up race in this primary fight.
Only later that evening does she step down from her official position in the Clinton campaign, saying in her resignation letter “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”
The media’s giant hydra head spins relentlessly. But at least Keith Olbermann had the vocabulary to speak clearly on this issue, in one of his Special Comment’s:
To Senator Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness…
And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns — a disturbing, but only borderline remark…
After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A-M” ad… a disturbing — but only borderline interpretation…
And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion — a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness…
After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern… false, or true.
After those precedents, there are those who see an intent… false, or true.
After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe — falsely or truly — as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice which still haunts this society voiced… and to not distance the campaign from it.
We agree. And we could go on and on and on debunk this, or we could let The Senator speak for himself:
“I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed,” he said. “The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”
Vote John Harry O’Bama ‘08!!
