No one says you can’t criticize Obama. But you have to fight fair. Want to critique his health care plan? No one will accuse you of racism. Yet, if you accuse him of being an ex-drug dealing Muslim who attended a madrassa in Indonesia and then try to diminish his appeal by comparing him to Jesse Jackson in order to court white voters south of the Mason-Dixon line, that might do it.
As pressure mounted, a defiant Ferraro sent Hillary Clinton a letter saying that she was leaving the campaign’s national finance committee “so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself.” She accused the Obama campaign of attacking her to hurt Hillary.
What happened to: “they’re attacking me because I’m white?”
The sad part is that a lot of people agree with Ferraro’s comments about Obama. In that way, you could argue that our country is a victim of its own success — Americans were so successful in dismantling Jim Crow and passing the Voting Rights Act that they raised a couple of generations that now believe that being black or Latino in our society is a bonus that gives you a golden ticket — to college, a well-paying job, a nice house in the suburbs.
These people live in a fantasy world. They tell themselves that they or their kids could have gotten into Harvard Law School and become editor of the Harvard Law Review if some skinny black kid with a funny name hadn’t taken their spot. Our political leaders are supposed to know better. They’re supposed to douse those fires with perspective and common sense.
Geraldine Ferraro opted for gasoline.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/ferraro_should_have_known_bett.html
