When I wrote about Geraldine Ferraro’s comments about Obama yesterday, I didn’t suggest she was being a racist. I just thought she had a lot of nerve to suggest that the only reason he is kicking Clinton’s ass is because he is black. After all, Ferraro only got to run for vice-president because she was a woman. So, I thought David Axelrod went a little too far when he said Ferraro’s comments were part of an “insidious pattern”. But Ferraro isn’t helping herself with this:
In a follow-up interview
Geraldine Ferraro today defended comments she made to the Daily Breeze last week saying the media was biased against Hillary Clinton and that Barack Obama would not be where he is today if he were not black. (The Associated Press)
today, Ferraro said her company had been deluged with vicious e-mail messages accusing her of racism.But far from backing off from her initial remark, Ferraro defended it and elaborated on it.
“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?”
And this isn’t much better.
She also said she is familiar with Axelrod from his work for minority candidates in New York.
“He knows damn well that the best thing to do in a situation like this is to come back and hit with race,” Ferraro said, adding that the response is a sign that the Obama campaign is “worried” about the first-term senator’s lack of experience.
Ferraro said she was not trying to diminish Obama’s candidacy, and acknowledged up front that she would not have been the vice presidential nominee in 1984 if she had been a man.
But she also echoed remarks of feminist leaders like Gloria Steinem, who argued in the New York Times that Obama would not have succeeded if he were a woman because gender is “the most restricting force in American life.”
“Sexism is a bigger problem,” Ferraro argued. “It’s OK to be sexist in some people’s minds. It’s not OK to be racist.”
I hope I won’t offend any women if I say that Geraldine Ferraro needs to Shut the Fuck Up.
I have seen variations of this in YOUR comment sections. That sexism is worse than racism in America, and because of that Clintons female supporters were just as likely to be discouraged as Obama’s black supporters.
I don’t buy it. Sexism is a subtle, terrible thing, but racism is institutionalized by in many cases, the government, both local and national.
And it is ongoing.
By this I mean that many African Americans have actually SEEN ‘back door’ deals that have the intent of excluding them. Not many voter ID laws or gerrymandered districts are meant to exclude women. No, these are things that are done with a wink to exclude people of color.
She should STFU.
nalbar
Tell me if racism still exists, and whether it is killing Obama in the south.
Oh, but yes it exists. And yes, I think there is a link to educational and income levels in the South–I’d like to see someone credibly dispute it. Will it kill Obama in the South? As of now… probably. But Hillary’s dead meat down here, too as far as the primary AND the General–and she’s not black. We have time to work on the race barrier here before the Democrats become seriously viable politically down here again. That will still be awhile, BooMan.
Obama, I believe, stands to be able to make greater inroads as far as removing that barrier than any other black candidate on the horizon. But as far as those numbers, yes I’m hoping to see Obama break AT LEAST 30% here in MS.
Tell her to call me when she or her mother or her grandmother had to either get off the sidewalk when a white person of either sex passed them, or if any of them had to give the correct number of bubbles on a bar of soap in order to vote. Then we can compare notes.
Dumb ass.
This is Ferraro:

I just posted an entry about this. After reading Ferraro’s comments yesterday, I was livid. I tried to post an entry didn’t call her a ‘motherfuckin’ heifer’ or other such phrases that litter my non-polite side. I took a new tack and prevailed.
But now, she’s pulling a Rep. King and the Clinton campaign is accusing the Obama campaign of playing the race card.
I’m hot ya’ll. My dreadlocks are steaming.
Gotta love that Zoidberg! very funny!
Yeah, Geraldine just gets worse and worse. Since when did Hillary wake up thinking, “Yes! That’s it! I’ll use the first female Democratic vice presidential nominee as my quasi/stealth race attack dog! Brilliant! I mean, Brillary!”
I think they need to put her back under her rock, now.
I refuse to take the race bait from GF and allow her to use me to divide me and my friends more. This is reminiscent of how Rove USED abortion and gay marriage to cull issues down and bumper sticker the race. I reserve the right to wish GF and any other mouthpieces who attemp to DRIVE me may directly go to Hell.
On Rove’s splitting strategy:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/rove200612
Considering the Clinton campaign’s reaction to todays’ “you discriminate against me because I’m white” comment, there really isn’t much doubt about where they’re going with this.
When your enemy is busily engaged in making a mistake, get the hell out of their way.
LOL!!!
And BooMan – I’m not offended. I couldn’t agree more. She should STFU.
Oh now I see where the whole experience deal was going. It didn’t make sense that Clinton would make an issue of this being that she visited 80 countries basically as a tourist. The whole bloody thing is designed to bring forth an affirmative action backlash from us white people.
Guess what I ain’t buying it. Barack Obama is experienced, smart and can make the correct decisions on the first try. He does not have to go back and lie or apologize for his record. Many exceptional people do not. Barack is not the second coming but he is head and shoulders above the rest of the entire field of presidential candidates in the 2008 primaries. To even say race has anything to do with it shows an ignorance of where this country is right now and who has been vying to lead it.
Can we please have a competent and clean(unsoiled by the political process, thank you) candidate as our nominee without him being trashed with a bunch of BULLSHIT. Please!!!
P.S. Ferraro you can kiss my white Obama supporting ass.
I agree with dnA at Too Sense Halfricanrevolution that
Obama should turn his back on Ferraro.
Obama and Ferraro
Being from NY this Ferraro crap doesn’t surprise me….She and her ilk, including her family are from the old time CRIMINAL wing of the Dem party in NY…in cahoots with the ReTHUG Molinari’s et al……
She is an abomination and not very bright…she is best friends with John Gibson and wife of Fixed News,…need I say more???
Boo,
Let her keep digging holes for the Clinton campaign.
Maggie Williams is helping too. First, she defended the African garb photo dump and now she is accusing the Obama campaign of turning Geraldine’s comments into a racial issue.
Last night Lanny Davis even tried to ask why Obama was so angry.
These poor folks can’t decide if they should scratch their watches or wind their butts because Obama has not been turned into the Angry Black Man in the minds of Americans no matter what they do.
Another thing about the Ferraro comments I forgot to mention: I think it’s fairly clear that Clinton is using Ferraro in a very targeted way (despite the jaw-dropping broadsides Ferraro’s been spewing)–and that is to try (I think) to shore up some of her core female support. Obama has been shown, most noticeably to me in Wisconsin, to be eating into Clinton’s female vote. This Ferraro stuff looks like thinly-veiled code to me. I think if I were Clinton, I too might be tempted to sling double
handfuls of whatever I could against the wall and hope something sticks before it slides. But again, this seems specifically aimed at Hillary’s wavering women supporters. Don’t remember what the Ohio breakdowns said about Hillary’s support among women, though.
No, Marge Schott, they’re attacking you because you’re saying bigoted stuff.
I’m am so incredibly livid over that entire interview, the
MammyMaggie Williams memo and the fact that the Clinton’s campaign had the nerve to ask that Powers be fired, yet won’t do a damn thing about Ferraro, who they’re now saying isn’t part of the campaign.This is all utter horseshit.
Is this really how the Clinton’s want to stir up the racist vote in the remaining states. I do not find it sheer coincidence that this comes up the same day of the MS primary. We should fully expect more of these sort of statements from surrogates. As I posted on my blog:
The stupidity of Ferraro’s ramblings is that there is both sexism and racism, and depending on individual circumtances, one can trump another.
Being an old union man (and believe me, I’ve seen plenty of both sexism and racism in unions so I’m not saying they are without sin) I go back to the saying, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” When someone is wronged, you stand up for that person. If you stand around saying, “Yeah, but I really got screwed over worse,” you never get anything done. This is the identical crap that Gloria Steinem said on the eve of the New Hampshire election. It gets you nowhere. I am sure right now that there are people on the web saying, “Women have it worse than black men.” It’s stupid. All this kind of talk does is to piss off people. It shows again how the Clinton camp thinks that dividing up the Democratic Party is good for her personal goals.
Yeah, the person I’ve been disappointed by (other than my junior senator, but there I’m not surprised) is Steinem.
I have a chronic case of Foot-In-Mouth, myself, so I hesitated to comment on this whole flare-up, but the whole business of equating or minimizing other groups’ oppression never seems to provide a lot of light. What’s relevant here?
Well, if a non-Black junior senator from Illinois managed to come from behind, create a massive ground organization in states expected to be unresponsive, break record after record on fundraising including measures of #s of small donors, would that senator be in the running for nomination to be the Democratic candidate for president?
Why yes, I do believe that person would!!!
On the other hand, applying a similar question to the junior senator from New York– if she had not been the wife of a prominent male politician, would she have any foreign experience to talk about? Would she have had the name recognition to become a senator in a then-unfamiliar state?
Why no, I don’t believe she would have.
(note I am a feminist who definitely would like to become someone’s wife! I just want to highlight how deep the hypocrisy goes with Ferraro’s claim… Better call the wahhhhmbulance!)
That is absolutely spot-on. The divisions amongst us — race, gender, religion, language, etc. — provide the establishment with a handy way to keep us busy tearing at each other’s throats instead of challenging the system.
There are some divisive issues that the politicians of both parties never want to see resolved. Abortion is probably the most obvious of the bunch: neither party wants to see it settled because it’s such a reliable source of votes. Racism, sexism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and all the rest are also powerful tools in the hands of the powers that be.
This is a real danger we face from “our” politicians. Establishment Dems like Hillary Clinton actively benefit from racism and sexism. If racism ceased to be a problem, Democrats couldn’t do their periodic election year happy dances in front of the NAACP and then safely ignore black voters the rest of the time. If reproductive rights weren’t perpetually imperiled and women’s wages weren’t so much less than men’s, what use would women have for the Democratic Party?
“Our” politicians benefit from the oppression “their” politicians dish out to us. It’s worth thinking about before lining up behind a divisive politician you think is on “your” side. If we do not stand together, we will serve individually.
what surprises me is that she hasn’t been fired by the Clinton campaign yet. 24 hours and no decisive decision from Hillary, doesn’t make Hillary look like she’s ready to lead on “day one”.
She’s not firing her because she sent her out there to say precisely what she said.
On possibly offending women. I’ve got no quarrel with people who support Mrs Clinton for her policies, most of which with the major and determining one of her vote on Iraq, I can live with. I quarrel with those who want her because she’s a woman, and that somehow breaking the glass ceiling trumps all other concerns. This makes her a one-issue candidate, no better than the candidate who gets the fundies for his or her opposition to abortion. We are in a situation far too deadly to have our election turn on important but in the present context, secondary matters.
Let’s bite another bullet. Would you rather have a court that supported free choice or a court that supports the 1st, 4th and 5th amendment? Some people would go for free choice. It’s a matter of proportion, and people who vote for a person solely because she is a woman lack it. It ends up not being about the res publica; it’s ultimately all about them. American narcissism. It’s our national trait, and the whole world knows it.
I don’t. Whatever someone chooses to base their vote upon is ultimately their right. I may try to show them what I believe to be a better basis, thus producing a better choice, but ultimately it is their free choice and I have no quarrel with anyone’s basis for choosing. Now the basis of their vote may tell me how I should interact with them going forward, if at all, but I would never say that they have no right to base their vote on this or that. Ultimately, voting is self-centered – “this is what I want” – even if the political intentions of a particular voter are altruistic, so it should come as no surprise that many people vote according to their identity.
This is especially true for those of us who have had our identity historically questioned, denigrated and devalued. Given a rare opportunity to validate our identity in a near-universal fashion (such as selecting a president) we will often, indeed, validate ourselves. For some that means voting for the woman candidate, for some that means voting for the Black candidate, while yet for others it means choosing between validating their gender or their race. When your essential identity has never been in question then you would have no need or desire to validate your identity – in fact, identity politics would be about as foreign to you as aboriginal music from down under.
Some people see an opportunity to right a historical wrong – an opportunity to validate womanhood or Blackness – and there is nothing wrong with them voting according to their conscience. I can disagree with their choice for a candidate – vehemently – but I can not denigrate their right to choose said candidate on that basis and I certainly can not denigrate them as individuals. Denigrating them is not only wrong, it creates a need for further validation…
All of this negativity is trickling down to ordinary folks who vote the Democratic ticket. Just today, I was talking with a fellow teacher who follows politics with interest and has been an active member of our union. He said that if the superdelagates chose her, he would not vote at all.
BTW, re: offending–
Well you might offend at least one or two women, which is OK, since women are allowed to think differently ;-), and both Clinton and Ferraro might benefit from reading your post!!
Whatever Ferraro’s intent, and to me she sounds pretty prejudiced, what does this say about Clinton’s leadership abilities? One of Obama’s top people goes off message — she’s gone. I might disagree, but it shows they have their sh*t together. Either the Clinton campaign does not (maybe too much winding– thank you Cee!), or they are race-baiting… or both of the above are true.
Sad.
And speaks very badly of Clinton’s ability to lead on day anything!
I was so glad to see Virginians (incl esp White Virginians) reject this garbage… Hope that Pennsylvanians will, too.
Sketched out timeline showing how racism issue emerged (please add links). But… I’m starting to see how racism/sexism hides a bigger issue: The Youth Vote and its impact. Jim Demers said if Obama wins “it would be the first time since the Vietnam War that the youth vote made a difference”. Highly recommend Does Barack Obama’s Youth Vote Signal A Generational & Political Shift?, which points out how the Millennials “would be a Hero generation and aligned with the WWII-era GI generation” (& with that i’d read ‘The Calling’ by General Tony Zinni in Tom Clancy’s Battle Ready).
Clinton N.H. Official Warns Obama Will Be Attacked on Drug Use | 12-Dec
Iowa Democratic Caucus | 03-Feb
Clinton Talks Tears with Fox News | 07-Jan (MLK-LBJ)
Bill Clinton on Obama: “Fairy Tale” | 08-Jan
New Hampshire Democratic Primary | 08-Jan
Is it a “dog whistle” when White people do it? | 10-Jan
Team Clinton’s Anti-Black Dog Whistle | 11-Jan
Obama Camp’s Memo on Clintons’ Politicizing Race | 12-Jan
For Bill Clinton, Echoes of Jackson in Obama Win | 26-Jan
South Carolina Democratic Primary | 26-Jan
JJP put together a wiki back in January, listing all the wonderful Clinton race-baiting attacks.
i remembered this, but couldn’t remember the link. thanx!
I intend to start searching for articles on Ferraro’s husband. As I recall, he was both a slumlord and a hobnobber with mobsters.
Anyone recall how and why she was chosen for the vp slot, other than as something of a giimmick? She wasn’t a woman of accomplishment then and certainly isn’t now.
We have/did have women like Pat Schroeder, Elizabeth Edwards, Barbara Boxer, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, et al. Please add to this list. Let’s see how many fully qualified, ethical, capable women we can come up with.
john zaccaro…an interesting piece of work according to the village voice, and a fairly long list of articles at the NYT Archive if you’re so inclined.
Thank you. I am so inclined. And outraged to boot.
Neither party ever puts a distinguished person in the VP spot.
The VP spot is filled by the absolute worst person in the world at the time. The VP spot is filled by the one person who will make even the craziest potential assassin of a president think twice about the alternative.
Gore?
Absolutely!
To the right-wingers, who would be the potential aggressors in that situation, Gore was far more “liberal” than Clinton and thus a greater threat to the right-wing hegemony in America.
Ferraro may wish she had kept her stupid mouth shut.
After a quick search I see that her son was convicted of selling cocaine.
I wouldn’t assume that Ferraro hasn’t helped the Clinton somewhat, and in a very perverse way. The offended are not the target, and there’s a very large contingent who do believe that whites are discriminated against.
See Flight of the White Male: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=68225069-3048-5C12-00FA02842EFBC1AA
Also see Southern Discomfort: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1746343/posts
The problem with the use of Ferraro is that most people who remember who she was remember that her husband was mobbed and she brought nothing to the ticket in ’84. It’s not that there are huge Ferraro fan clubs. She couldn’t get elected to any office, even in New York, after ’84.
So I’m not sure that she’ll really pull that many votes Clinton’s way, at least if Obama’s team plays it right.
For ex, does anyone think that anyone even likes Ferraro in central Pennsylvania? That’s if they remember who the hell she is.
It’s not about Ferraro – it’s about changing the narrative. Sometimes in basketball, when you’re out-classed and out-manned, you’ll send in some scrub from the end of the bench to use up all of his fouls on an opposition player. It’s no loss for the scrub – he wasn’t in the game anyway and doesn’t have a whole lot of value to the team – and it can throw the opposition player off of his game, maybe even injure him. It’s unethical, but it happens.
This is why Ferraro was subbed into the game at this juncture – to try to change the narrative from Barack beginning another winning streak to one of race. That’s a job for a scrub on the end of the bench with several fouls to give.
the Clinton campaign strategy is to repeat over and over again, “hey folks, look at Obama…he’s a black guy…not one of us!”
“he’s black….just wanna remind you.”
these are not mistakes… they are doing this on purpose…telling us again and again that Obama is black, just in case we hadn’t heard.
A comedy sketch that’s funny cause it’s true: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SDHxaYhqAo.
I’m just trying to grapple with what Geraldine Ferraro is saying. I mean, wow. Demetrius, as an African American man, has obviously caught every break in life, whereas I, as a white woman have been downtrodden and oppressed.
I think I shall have to be rather miffed about this. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. I mean, my first instinct is to start belting out “We shall overcome…” But that’s one of their songs, isn’t it? Drat, drat, drat!
Nah, I just can’t do this. I say this sort of total bullsh*t with a straight face.
I bow to Geraldine Ferraro and concede her superior skill in that particular art…
Sad thing is, she may not even get that that her comment was racist. And she doesn’t get that people are inspired by Obama’s message of hope and change and a new way of doing things. That’s what I support. I wouldn’t care if he were green with purple polka dots. (Well maybe not the polka dots.)
I have a question I’ve been wanting to ask someone, and it is in all sincerity – I’m not trying to be flip. I’m really curious.
Why is Barack Obama considered black? What are the criteria. Is it because his skin is darker (so are Latinos or Middle Eastern or Indian) or is it something HE decided? Or what? He is also half white – he was born to a white mother.
And so aren’t people then also being racist against white people too? He is both. I recently read he’s part Irish. So here’s to O’bama.
he’s also related to Dick Cheney.
He’s black because he appears black and would have been treated as black under the Jim Crow system.
In other words, he has to deal with prejudice and discrimination because of his black appearance.
That, in America, is all it takes.
He also self-identifies as black.
It took me many many many years to realize the strange dots on my mother’s face were… freckles! We’re AA & part Irish (US presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s roots have possibly been traced to an 18th century Irish shoemaker).
White people back in the day said, “If you have one-drop of black blood in you, you’re black.” This is why “passing” for many was hard as they had to lie about their backgrounds and hide their families. So, that got ingrained.
Black people…we know we got some mixes going on, look at all our glorious shades from light yellow to the deepest black. We’re okay with that. So, you got one-drop, we claim you. White people weren’t ever going to do it. Hell, these are people who were bigoted against Irish people and they’re pretty damn white themselves.
So…a funny thing happened on the way to the forum…now white people are saying that black people are racists for saying that Obama is black. All these mocha latte superstars; Mariah Carey, Bob Marley, Alicia Keys, Halle Barry, Thandie Newton, Sade, Tiger Woods and everyone just calls them black. No one bats an eye.
Now…we got a little mixed baby running for president and white people are asking, “Why does he have to be ‘black’?” And thing that kills me the most is that I’m sitting here listening to a hit piece on Obama on MSNBC–focusing on his blackness.
I don’t think it is a hit piece.
You just don’t get it, Boo. Geraldine Ferraro is “very imporw’nt on Longue Island,” and if she says Negroes have it easy in America, it must be true.
Or something.
And, after all, like Kos said: Being black clearly worked wonders for Presidents Jackson, Sharpton and Mosley-Braun.
As a lifelong humanist who has ardently supported women’s rights as a component of the social justice movement to come out of the 1960-70’s, have to say that I have never liked the feminist movement. It has divided the social justice movement and forced everyone else to put aside a pluralistic agenda in favor of the exclusive feminist agenda.
We have not talked about civil rights since the 1970’s in America because we have been forced to talk about abortion and glass ceilings.
We have not talked about social justice because feminist Democrats like Hillary Clinton joined with the right-wing christian mommy state types who pushed authoritarian criminal justice as the way to solve social and public health problems in America.
Well I say, as a lifelong humanist who has ardently supported a pluralistic homo sapiens equality agenda, FUCK HILLARY CLINTON AND HER RIGHT-WING FEMINIST AUTHORITARIANS.
As a fellow humanist, I thank you for invoking humanism and humanist values.
I am amazed and gratified to find another of us on the same forum. Well met friend.
I am a founding board member of the Central Colorado Humanists, a chapter of the AHA. We are now in the middle of our 4th year and had amazing success in our rural mountain community. Our Sunday Science group draws 25 people every month. We have had programs ranging from debates on the First Amendment to interfaith discussions on the Iraq War to art conservation and an AIDS project in Africa. Our most celebrated presenters have been Matthew Rothschild on why Bush should be impeached and a concert by Emma’s Revolution. We’ve raised money to award 2 $400 scholarships for local high school students and have had two discussion courses, one on the Enlightment and now one on separation of church and state. We have a Darwin Day program each year that is very well attended.
Whew!
Thank you for your kind response.
I’m sitting here trying to figure out whether I should post this, and how to introduce it & yadda yadda. Race is a factor in minority women & infant health. Mississippi, for example, has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country — it’s also “pro-life” (Red State Moral Values). Personally, I could care less if the next president is white, black, polka-dot, female, male or transgendered. Mississippi is a red state and therefore insignificant in some quarters; however, Mississippi was part of Dean’s maiden tour as DNC chief.
Minority Women and Advocacy for Women’s Health
Thanks to Howard. I am continually amazed at how much he has done in the past 4 years.
http://www.americablog.com/2008/03/ferraro-did-it-again-two-weeks-ago.html
February 27, 2008:
and
March 10, 2008:
Yup. Kos and Americablog have dug up some nice pairs of identical phrases… which means that she memorized these racist digs and waits for a chance to insert them. Accidental? My left foot!
:pfffft!:
Ferraro is on Clinton’s Finance Committee and ought to be repudiated instead of shoved out with her pre-taped message. (My mental image is of a Chatty Cathy doll with a pull-cord and some catch phrases.) Somebody ought to ask who gave Ferraro this message to broadcast? Penn?
She comes across as extremely jealous and bitter. Given her own lack of appeal as a candidate, that is perhaps understandable.
It wouldn’t be nice, but if Clinton has all that executive experience through sharing a bed with Bill, does Ferraro have mobster experience because of who she shared a bed with? Osmosis through marriage ought to work all the time, if it works for Clinton.