Is it really only a few years since Hillary Clinton was being excoriated for hugging Yasser Arafat's wife? Now, suddenly, she's the standard-bearer for American Judaism in the 2008 election. Let me point out the obvious: Hillary is not racist. Obama is not sexist or anti-semitic. All of the careful code words and indignant counterattacks are beneath the dignity of adults vying to represent a once great nation.
And boy, am I glad there aren't any Kennedys running. It's bad enough reading about this stuff; I don't think I could stand actually listening to it.
3...2...1...
"All of the careful code words and indignant counterattacks are beneath the dignity of adults vying to represent a once great nation."
Except against Ron_Paul, right?
(Btw, feel free to address me as "Person" rather than making comments in my general direction.)
Untrue, the fact that both Senators Clinton and Obama are on record as supporting laws that mandate discrimination on the basis of race and gender in the name of the “affirmative action” is incontrovertible proof that both are indeed racist and sexist.
interesting link to tpm, why not follow his/their lead : http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/07/walt_mearsheimers_best_seller_why_the_hysteria
and cover Mearsheimer and Walt's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374177724
For your readership? You may actually bring some, needed, background to your post..
1) Clinton wasn't "excoriated" for hugging Suha Arafat but for sitting by while Arafat made wildly inflammatory remarks, including accusing Israel of poisoning Palestinians.
2) I'm reasonably "active in the community" and have received nothing derogating Obama.
3) The Haaretz poll Rosenberg links gives Obama a score of 5.25, ahead of Wesley Clark, John Kerry and Russ Feingold and slightly behind John Edwards' 5.87. How he breaks "right wing" views out of any information there, I have no idea.
4) Is anyone else amused by the notion that "the right-wing of the Jewish community" is the Clinton supporters?
5) Whatever you make of the connection between Obama and Jeremiah Wright, a comparison to M.J. Rosenberg and someone who is not the rabbi at the synagogue Rosenberg no longer goes to because of that rabbi seems a bit tenuous.
As part of the real right wing of the Jewish community, my impression is that Rosenberg is using his own code words to imply that Obama opponents (and I have no particular aversion to Obama, and certainly prefer him to Edwards) are racists, while simultaneously smearing Jews he dislikes.
When can we expect your promised my-choice-is-Obama post, Megan? I don't want to miss it.
Megan,
I don't understand this. I don't know what you mean when you say:
"Let me point out the obvious: Hillary is not racist. Obama is not
sexist..."
Because to me, it's, well of course Hillary is a racist. And
for that matter, well of course Obama is a racist. To me, it's so
clear that both are racist that I feel a kind of puzzlement when
someone asserts otherwise.
The key here, obviously, must be what you mean when you say "racist."
Clearly you are using the word differently than I do.
But I don't know what sense you do mean. I can't imagine a careful,
coherent logic where it does make sense to assert that they are not
racist without at the same time pretty much excluding everyone else
also.
I'm not saying that it's absurd for you to say that they are not
racist. After all what you're saying is ordinary. Many people would
be indignant at the assertion that these two are racist.
The difference is I'm not expecting much from most people, whereas in
your case I know you can be a careful thinker with an ability to spot
the contradictions.
So if you have a good piece of logic I'd like to hear it.
As for the sexism thing, it's my opinion that despite all the progress
that has been made, that at the end of the day it's still the case
that all men are sexists and all women are sexists. And that this
basic circumstance is never going to change, at least as long as there
are still men and women.
Mark, you may have some definition of "racist" into which both Obama and Clinton fall, but you're sounding definitely like Jonah Goldberg with his redefinition of "fascism" to whallop the left.
(Oh, and the whole Ron Paul thing....? When you have a very small party and you're already considered a kook by the rest of the planet, it just might behove you to not associate with people considered batshit insane.)
Grumpy Realist,
Increasingly I'm of the opinion that the difference between left
and right is more than a difference of political opinion, instead
more often than not there seems to be a difference in cognitive style.
Your response for is classically leftist -- a pattern that can be
seen all over the internet.
Asked a question, you make, so far as I can tell, no attempt to
answer it. There's no evidence that even in the silence of your
own head you asked yourself well what do I mean when I use this
word?
It's classic.
Instead you jump subject to two apparently completely different
subjects.
Classic.
No real rational is offered; not even for your new subjects.
No or little meat is there. There isn't that much to think about
really. It's just an "I hate you" message.
Classic.
In the sense that we are all conditioned, by society and perhaps by evolution, to make judgements about people based on race and gender, then yes, all the candidates are racists and sexists. But neither Hillary or Obama is racist/sexist/anti-semitic in a way that matters to the campaign.
Megan,
Well, we do share a basic definition, a starting point, on what
racism means.
You can't have racism unless you attach meaning to physical
attributes and in so far as I can determine this is a universal
and everyone does it.
For a while when I was younger I was doing some office temp
work and most of the people I worked with were young, female,
and black and virtually every day I'd be told that whites
did this or that, or were like this or that. Was it harmful?
I don't think so. Or if so it was it was in some deep,
non-obvious way.
Were some of the opinions derogatory? Well, of course. But
none of the derogatory stuff was aimed at me, so I didn't care.
The point is that anytime you immerse yourself in a group of
people that are unselfconscious about their racial categorizations
you're going to hear this sort of thing a lot. That's because,
I hypothesize, this is human nature. This is the way we are
wired to function.
A person has to be pretty heavily conditioned, not to do this.
So why does it matter?
Some of the racial characterizations I'd hear would seem to
me statistically accurate. In other words either most people
of the group being characterized as such actually had the trait
and the observation was significant in that it wasn't true of
all of humanity, or, sometimes, and this has a really limited
legitimacy, it wasn't true of some of the racial group so
described but it was a higher percentage than some other racial
group.
So again why does it matter? Why is this wrong?
The only issue, so far as I can see, is when a person suffers
negative consequences because a quality or a behavior is falsely
attributed to them. I.e., if you are not being evaluated as an
individual but as a member of a group.
Is there some other reason racism is wrong? If so I've missed
it.
Do we worry about this unjustice in any other sort of context
but people? No we don't. No one worries about rejecting a
car because some tiny percentage malfunctioned and even though
the odds are overwhelming that that particular car has no problem.
Does people feel any guilt about this judgement of a particular
car and strive to do better? No of course not, nor should they.
But inevitably, this mode of reasoning, which we use in so many
contexts, is going to overlap onto people.
Is the reason I'm faulting Hillary and Obama, for something is
more or less universal true? No, how could I do that. It's
true there are different degrees. People can be trained although
imperfectly to sensitive to the individual. And many are so.
But Hillary and Obama are leftists; they practice racial politics;
they assert the primacy of the group. They are consciously racist.
It's absurd to say that anyone on the left is not a racist and a racist
in a deeper, more explicit sense then in the universal context
I describe above.
It's one thing to deal with individuals, even if there are large
numbers of them, that hurt you because of their beliefs about
your race; it's another to deal with a private church, like Obama's,
or, far worse, a government.