Compare and contrast.
I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well…. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.
… Obama’s campaign [is] a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against…. For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign. If Obama was a white man, he would not 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.
In both cases you have someone black getting credit he doesn’t deserve, as the result of a solicitous press corps and a nation exhibiting undue sentiment for him.
Limbaugh, of course, got fired—and deserved to.
The Edge of the American West 
27 comments
March 11, 2008 at 4:24 pm
urbino
Excellent point. The fact that Hillary’s campaign went on to accuse the Obama campaign of “playing the race card” did me in. As noted elseblog, she has lost my vote, even in the general.
March 11, 2008 at 4:52 pm
urbino
Totally off topic, except for being political: should it worry me that, at the same time Adm. Fallon steps down, Bush sends Cheney to the Middle East? Because it does, a little.
March 11, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Daniel Buck
Those with a long memory — me — will recall that in 1984 when Walter Mondale plucked Geraldine Ferraro from relative obscurity and installed her as his vice-presidential nominee, the reaction from many quarters was that it would never have happened save for the fact that she was a woman.
Now she’s supremely peeved that time and chance have bestowed their blessing on another.
Politics embodies Ambrose Bierce’s dictum that a “calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”
Dan
March 11, 2008 at 5:07 pm
KRK
Dan, Ferraro concedes as much in a follow up interview (it’s supposed to be reachable from the article eric linked, but isn’t; here’s where I found it: http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8533832). But she says sexism is a bigger problem in America than racism, so her situation isn’t comparable. Gaaah.
March 11, 2008 at 5:35 pm
ixnaythemetier
Well, presumably we won’t bomb Cheney himself, though if he has any fear of poetic justice he’s well advised to pack an orange hunting vest.
March 11, 2008 at 7:03 pm
ArchPundit » Blog Archive » Compare and Contrast
[…] Okay: Compare and contrast. […]
March 11, 2008 at 7:05 pm
blueollie
Ferraro said similar things about Jesse Jackson in 1988.
She is a racist who thinks that “feminist credentials” will let her get away with it.
I have zero respect for her and close to zero respect for Clinton.
March 11, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Platypus
Really funny youtube video on the roll of race in the democratic party
SNL can only wish they could write something so funny
March 11, 2008 at 9:02 pm
bitchphd
Argh. I want to love Ferraro, but that article Urbino linked is awful. (And the “sexism is worse than racism” thing is not the worst thing in 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?”
Argh. Nononononopleasedon’tjusthavesaidthat.
March 11, 2008 at 9:07 pm
ari
She’s a repugnant piece of garbage. There’s no other way to read this story. And if Senator Clinton doesn’t show her the door, I’m not sure that I can vote for her in the fall. Should it come to that. Really, this is just impossible to accept.
March 11, 2008 at 9:26 pm
bitchphd
Yeah, it’s gross. And really, really personally disappointing to me.
I’m still not accepting the “I can’t vote for Clinton” line. Yes, the campaign has been racist. Yes, supporters have been racist. Yes, it’s unacceptable. But if she’s the nominee, that’s the choice we get, and y’know, lesser of two evils, blah blah.
That said. Yeah. It’s getting hard. She needs to disavow and reject this crap. Badly.
March 11, 2008 at 9:27 pm
bitchphd
“She” meaning Clinton, obvs.
Ferraro needs to read some fucking books and pull her head out of her ass.
March 11, 2008 at 9:30 pm
ari
Sexist. I mean the ass part. And the assumption that she can’t read. Just because she’s a woman. Sexist.
March 11, 2008 at 9:34 pm
bitchphd
I assume that she can read, but that for some unsavory reason she has lacked the intellectual curiosity to educate herself about racism.
I really want feminists of that era to know better, dammit. Pisses me off.
March 11, 2008 at 9:42 pm
eric
I really want feminists of that era to know better
It’s not just that era.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Which is not to say anything dumb like, “feminists are racists,” but rather to say there’s a terrible temptation in misery poker that can lead an oppressed group to get oppressive.
Also, it suggests that voices of hush-hush moderation can stop now.
March 11, 2008 at 9:44 pm
KRK
I suppose it’s naive and reckless of me to fantasize that the Democratic Party could benefit from another ’48-style convention where the new guard lays down some core principles and the bigots (or at least a big chunk of them) take a hike? Any historian types around here geared up for a 60th anniversary post on that convention?
March 11, 2008 at 9:47 pm
eric
Also, with respect to hilzoy, don’t mock the counterfactual; it helps make the case against Ferraro. The primaries posed Clinton, the presumptive front-runner, against two plausible not-Clintons: Edwards and Obama. I don’t believe Obama’s blackness helped him beat Edwards for the status of sole plausible not-Clinton.
March 11, 2008 at 9:56 pm
bitchphd
No, I totally realize that there’s a well-established history of white feminist racism. I don’t even think it’s b/c of misery poker so much (though that, too); it’s also that white feminists, being white–and usually from the fairly educated and privileged classes, at that–are likely to be racists. But women Ferraro’s age really *should* know better; the racism of second-wave feminism has been pretty raked over the coals (and yes, I know that doesn’t mean it’s gone away), and it’s not like she’s not old enough to remember the civil rights era.
Just embarrassing. And awful.
March 12, 2008 at 4:48 am
Jeff Boatright
I’m pretty agnostic between the two candidates (though I just bought an O’bama t-shirt for St. Paddy’s Day). I think it’s unrealistic to expect either to run a perfect campaign. If this Ferraro mess has you so upset that you think you can’t pull the “D” lever come November, or if ANYTHING has you that upset, let me remind you of a predictable change in the membership of an important club:
Scalia
Souter
Thomas
Roberts
Alito
{insert Stevens’ replacement}
{insert Bader-Ginsberg’s replacement}
{insert Kennedy”s replacement}
{insert Breyer’s replacement}
Now, who do you want naming those replacements?
March 12, 2008 at 4:55 am
bigdiggy
I thought the original Limbaugh-Ferraro comparison was outlandish and spurious, and then I saw the Elizabeth Cady Stanton quote. Come on . . .
March 12, 2008 at 5:08 am
The Commander Guy
I understand the supreme court argument and while I have hope that a President McCain would find a more western / liberatarian republican like O’Connor for a vacancy, it is still not something I am comfortable with.
But how much more of this BS does HRC think people will put up with?
I mean the supreme court arguement is exactly what the theocrats praise about GWB.
March 12, 2008 at 5:25 am
The Commander Guy
One other thing. HRC polarizing the Dem base, isn’t this exactly the opportunity to chip away a portion of the African American Vote that the Mehlman Types in the GOP have been praying for.
Conceivably you could have a comparatively moderate Western (not southern) Republican on the top of the ticket. And Ken Mehlmen types out appologizing that the Party of Lincoln has not acted like the party of Lincoln over the past 30 odd years and African American’s might be better off if there was competition for their vote, i.e., the GOP.
With a HRC nomination, you gotta see this coming.
March 12, 2008 at 5:48 am
silbey
Totally off topic, except for being political: should it worry me that, at the same time Adm. Fallon steps down, Bush sends Cheney to the Middle East? Because it does, a little
We haven’t got the troops to do anything major in the Middle East (cough*Iran*cough) at the moment. Even the forces not in Iraq at the moment have likely just come from Iraq and are rebuilding and retraining.
We do have the forces for a bombing campaign, but that wouldn’t do anything useful.
(Sending Cheney in by himself, however…)
March 12, 2008 at 9:43 am
Jeff Boatright
Uh, you mean the O’Connor who held on just so she could hand Bush the presidency?
Sorry, you’re way, way off the mark if you think a Republican president, ANY Republican president, isn’t going to put in another Alito, Scalia, or Roberts. Na ga happen.
And this says nothing about the other judges the next prez will get to name.
As for the argument that the other side does it and so it must be bad: Not persuasive.
March 12, 2008 at 9:50 am
eric
As for the argument that the other side does it and so it must be bad: Not persuasive
Who’s making that argument?
March 12, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Barack Obama News » Blog Archive » Limbaugh/McNabb, Ferraro/Obama
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March 12, 2008 at 9:50 pm
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