1.) The reason many pundits sit in the back of class yelling “BORING” while making armpit farty sounds when it comes to Bob Herbert is simply because what he writes about does not affect them. Most of the pundit class is privileged, white, insured, employed, and talking about the widespread despair for millions of Americans is akin to talking to Eskimos about what suntan lotion is the best for a trip to the French Riviera. When you read about the issues Herbert discusses and say to your self that this “his motives were obviously honorable, his compassion deep, and his solutions sincere, if invariably trite,” and that he was such a “boring, familiar voice,” you probably aren’t focusing on what he is saying at all and instead are mentally composing your next piece on Trig Palin or beards, or in Joe Klein’s case, how the DFH’s are ruining America.
2.) Geraldine Ferraro will probably get a lot of pundit love over the next few days, and Anne Laurie does mention the few bright spots, but for me, her legacy is another tough on crime pol whose coke-dealing son got off light, a husband who was a crook, an incompetent pol who lost 49 states in 1984, disappeared for a long while and then re-emerged, offering up some of the ugliest and most racist rhetoric in the 2008 campaign. It’s one thing to start off racist and spend your life atoning, as Robert Byrd did, but Ferraro for me will be just another bitter white crank who still thinks it is 1960 and that it is ok to say things like:
“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.”
She ended her life moving in the wrong direction, offering up whatever racist and sexist bilge she could find to sink Obama, and she did it for a profit, vomiting up her bile as a paid commenter on Fox. She was Harriet Christian with name recognition and a (D) after her name, stirring up racial resentment in a shrinking white middle class that, amusingly enough, had already resoundingly rejected her several decades ago and never much cared for her outside of a NY borough. Feminism deserved better.
I won’t miss her or her “contributions,” thank you very much. That’s her legacy, it’s not my fault for pointing it out, and I didn’t join Gerry Ferraro’s idea of the Democratic party.
Corner Stone
Who earned the franchise first?
Corner Stone
What kind of letter did she write her grandkids after Obama was elected?
For that is the true measure of a man.
Mr Stagger Lee
John, THANK YOU!! And it needs to be said at some other blogs.
DFS
Rampant poverty, spiraling unemployment, an ever-expanding income gap, all these are as nothing compared to the horror of circumcision.
kdaug
Oh my, goodness gracious. We got ourselves a right full-on BJ/Sully fight?
Let the games begin.
Upper West
Becoming a Fox News Democrat really does tarnish her legacy.
Litlebritdifrnt
Ditto John. I can understand the hero worship when someone has died, but come on, she was the worst of the PUMAs, and allowed herself to be used in the worst possible way. I have nothing but contempt for her abandonment of her ideals.
Corner Stone
Does this mean no more linking to Sully from BJ?
Otherwise…
Comrade DougJ
I also don’t think Ferraro was any kind of a major figure as a politician. She’s no Nancy Pelosi. Ain’t no ballpark neither.
mclaren
Amen. Preach it, brother!
The Dangerman
OT, but Billy Donovan just showed some shitty coaching (course, I was rooting for Butler, so I’m cool with it).
Edit: Count me as one that doesn’t care much about what Ferraro said in 2008; being the designated hatchet
manwoman is never pretty.Boudica
Ha! I had forgotten about her drug-dealing son. He was in my class at Middlebury College in VT and it was all the campus gossip at the time.
Yutsano
@Litlebritdifrnt: We haven’t heard from R-Jud today. I’m thinking she might be occupado with a few matters.
Josie
Thank you for both points, John. These are things that need to be said, and loudly.
Maude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t think Ferraro was used at all in 2008. She was naturally like that and it showed in 1984.
John’s description of pundits is a full win. And so true.
We, who not of their class and not as well off are rift raft.
Cervantes
Thanks, John.
Angry Black Lady
She said the exact same shit about Jesse Jackson in ’88.
There was no atonement or push into racist views. She held them from the get-go.
Maude
@Comrade DougJ:
And she wasn’t even in the same ballpark as Pelosi. Pelosi knee kicked her way to being speaker. One of the best speakers the House has ever had.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
two bull’s-eyes with one post
the more I think about it, Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan really are twin sons of different mothers. Klein has, in his own mind, leftist cred because he worked at Rolling Stone for a while and gets giddy about going to Sully’s wedding, so the teacher-bashing and calls for cuts in the safety net make him an edgy and independent-minded liberal; Sullivan thinks of himself some kind of unique radical because he’s the gay Catholic/Conservative who turned against the neo-cons after being one of their most obnoxious supporters.
And Ferraro was a FoxNews Democrat long before 2008, but nobody knew it because she was on their third-tier filler show, with the big Ed Begley-looking dink who got shit-canned to make room for the ratings juggernaut that is Greta Van Whosits.
hilts
1) For people who don’t find Bob Herbert boring, check out these videos from C-SPAN
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Upfro
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/BobHe
“Boring” is the most ridiculous, bullshit criticism I’ve heard in a long time. As 24/7 cable news, reality tv shows, and some forms of social media continue to dumb this pathetic fucking country down to death, I want many more “boring” commentators like Bob Herbert.
2) As other people pointed out in a previous thread, I’d take the careers of Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, and Bella Abzug in a heartbeat over Geraldine Ferarro’s career.
mark
John Cole wins the intertubes tonite. thx
JAHILL10
Hey JC, I agree heartily re: Ferraro. Thanks for saying it clearly and plainly. I don’t hold with not speaking ill of the dead when the dead were complete racist jerks.
Warren Terra
Herbert writes about the big social issues that the pundits find boring, both at the large and the small scale, which should make him a treasure, but he doesn’t seem very interested in politics or in the legislation that might concretely affect those social issues. The pundits do care about politics; some even care about legislation; Herbert is almost perfectly positioned for them to ignore him. His failure to focus on legislation also means that be has far less impact than he might on all those issues that mostly only he works on.
PS and OT: above the fold on the NYT website, John Bolton is making an ass of himself even by his own capacious standards x
MikeJ
@Corner Stone:
Earned it? Everybody at the same time.
Got it? Women go to vote in 1919. African Americans didn’t get to vote until 1965.
Asking “who’s repressed more than whom” and attacking each other is just playing into the hands of the oppressors though. It doesn’t mater who was more or more recently oppressed, just that we’re together now.
eemom
splendiforous, John Cole! We are of one mind on these matters.
Also too, I’ll reiterate what I said earlier, which is that Ferraro never actually DID squat to deserve respect as some kind of feminist pioneer. She got tapped for VP by a man who thought she’d help him win, just like someone else I could name. That’s kind of like the opposite of what I would look to as a role model.
Dilbatt
Thank you, John. I was trying to remember all the things she said about Obama during the campaign. Thanks for laying it out there.
Allan
I mentioned on Anne Laurie’s thread that I have more admiration for Shirley Chisholm, who mounted a serious campaign for the Presidency in 1972, and Sissy Farenthold, who ran for the VP nomination at the 1972 convention and came in second despite not being anointed by McGovern (and in retrospect, had she won, the Dems would have been spared one of their fatal mistakes that year).
Bob In Pacifica
Cole, my man, spot on. I’d forgotten about her stint on Faux.
eemom
@Comrade DougJ:
Ain’t even the same motherfuckin game.
The Dangerman
@Angry Black Lady:
I may have to reconsider my position; I don’t recall 1988 very well (one of the years spent in search of the best Tequila around). Still, I don’t recall anything in 2008 that was monstrously out of bounds (as opposed to, say, Palin and her “pallin around with terrorists” line).
stuckinred
@MikeJ: 1870
(February 3) The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified by the states, giving freed slaves and other African Americans the equal right to vote.
eemom
what a happy thread! Everybody agrees.
.
.
.
.
.
….3….2…..1…..
ItAintEazy
Geraldine Ferraro… didn’t she get elected because she promised to stop busing?
WaterGirl
@Maude: I thought her ability to raise a ton of funds for herself and others was what got her there. What’s this about knee-kicking, and is it different from knee-capping?
WereBear
Once upon a time, I worked in a big corporation who had a branch softball team. And there were no women allowed on the team, it being way back in the 1980’s when people (at least in NYC) still drank at lunch.
So the branch manager’s secretary, a woman, began campaigning to get on the softball team. She enlisted all the other women in the office; the top saleswomen, and the admin manager, along with the peons… it became a big deal and we actually did it.
After she had played a few games and the sky did not fall, a few other women approached her about them joining the team, too. She put them off with excuses until it became evident she had no intention of letting other women join… this had been something for her, she liked her exclusive access to the big shots in the company, and she had already pulled the ladder up after her.
And that’s the kind of feminist Geraldine Ferraro was.
Bob Loblaw
Honestly, the first part of that quote by itself is probably true.
If Barack Obama was instead Brad Olson, white guy former editor of the Harvard Law Review who teaches at U of Chicago, he probably never gets his political career off the ground to begin with. Even if his political talent and philosophy were the same.
The second part of that quote and the way Ferraro kept digging and digging afterwards? Yeah, she gave herself away.
Davis X. Machina
@hilts: You can accurately say “I was bored as I read Bob Herbert” or even “A lot of people tell me that they, too, were bored reading Bob Herbert.”
To be pedantic, Bob Herbert, or even a Bob Herbert column, can’t be boring. It’s a subjective state.
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: Yea well, she didn’t just make the “first” part now did she?
MikeJ
@stuckinred: If you’re not allowed to vote it doesn’t matter what the constitution says. Nathan Bedford Forrest trumped the constitution.
Mike in NC
>Most of the pundit class is privileged, white, insured, employed, and talking about the widespread despair for millions of Americans is akin to talking to Eskimos about what suntan lotion is the best for a trip to the French Riviera.<
No shit. Piss on Ferraro and the rest of the idiot Villagers.
hilts
h/t People
Gotta love that nickname
Shade Tail
@JAHILL10:
When it comes to whiners who complain about “speaking ill of the dead”, I like to reply with the following (I stole this from another blog):
“OK, I’ll never speak ill of the dead again. Gosh, Stalin sure was efficient.”
Joseph Nobles
Source of Jesse Jackson remark (warning, 2008 Politico link which quotes original 1988 story).
20 years of separation between those remarks. Classy, Geraldine, classy.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: And I’m not dogpiling with stuckinred (though in the right context it could be kinda fun) but the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.
/pedant
stuckinred
@MikeJ: So you didn’t really mean what YOU said either huh?
Silver
@WereBear:
Softball with co-workers. I’d rather pound a ebola infected roofing nail through the head of my penis with my forehead.
hilts
@Davis X. Machina:
I’d gladly take Bob Herbert over the pathetic Washington insider thumbsuckers any day of the week.
suzanne
O/T, but…
Bear DOOOOOOOOOOOOWN!
asiangrrlMN
Thanks, Cole, very well said. I can’t say much about your second point except her remarks about Obama completely turned me off, especially when she didn’t realize how ignorant she was. As to your first point, however, you are spot on. Herbert never wrote about riding in a cab and realizing the earth was flat. For which I am profoundly grateful.
@Yutsano: Hiya, hon. How you be?
Gin & Tonic
Geraldine Ferraro came from the same strain of NYC as Rudy Giuliani, frankly.
jazzgurl
Predictable Sully style- beards, gay,gay,gay, Palin,Palin, catholicism, any type of revolution live blogging, happy that whomever is gay, the beagle, the husband, waffling and rambling on nothing in particular of late, making everything sound psuedo-intellectual, knee-jerk,knee-jerk,knee-jerk, AND, he has the cheek to criticize boring!
While he was away he obviously was auditioning for the Daily Beast. Now he is prepped and ready to ramble and rant there.
CaseyL
Thank you, John. Most excellently said.
Ferraro was such a disaster as a Veep Candidate that the Democrats haven’t put a woman on the top ticket since, and she did not improve with the years.
Bella Abzug once made a comment about how we’ll know women have achieved political equality with men when a female politician can be as venal as a male politician. That seems to be the only “trail” Ferraro really blazed – and her successors are the Palins, O’Connells, and Fiorinas. Not, definitely and absolutely not, the Pelosis, Murrays, and Waters(es?).
stuckinred
@asiangrrlMN: get a room
sjw
1.) Amen. 2.) Amen. You’re a good man, John Cole.
Woodrowfan
@MikeJ:
Actually, African-American men could vote in most northern states after 1870 (and some could pre-1860, usually with property requirements.) They remained a loyal part of the Republican coalition until the 1930s and then were a swing vote until the 1960s.
As for the south, even after the “Redeemer” governments retook power in the south, they retained the vote in some southern urban areas such as Richmond.
You are right, of course, that throughout the former slave states, the overwhelming majority of blacks could not vote until 1965, or, if they could, were expected to vote the “right way.” But the situation in the north was far more fluid.
James E Powell
Ferraro did not morph into a Fox News Democrat, that was always who she was. She was a blue dog before that term existed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
btw– whatever happened to Harriet Christian? Senior Scholar at the Manhattan Institute? Bradley Foundation Fellow? her own show on Beck’s rumored network?
Rekster
Thanks much John. I am one who will truly miss Bob Herbert. He spoke for the rapidly vanishing middle class and those who are struggling to stay afloat and survive. Unfortunately, you are right about the MSM and their attitudes toward us out here who aren’t crazy and actually care about our fellow man.
That seems to be the difference. Our concern for those of us who are struggling rather than cutting taxes, spending and “entitlement” programs, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, and Food Stamps.
Once again, I will miss Bob but now will be able to keep my articles from the NYT under 20 per month with only reading Krugman and Gail Collins weekly.
asiangrrlMN
@stuckinred: With whom? Yutsy? Happily.
@Ozymandias, King of Ants: I’d like to thank all the little people without whom this award would not be possible. I’d like to thank all my fake-hubbies and fake-wives for standing beside—-hey, where’s that music coming from?
Ozymandias, King of Ants
@asiangrrlMN:
Win. You deserve a f**kin’ Pulitzer for that sentence.
Hey! There’s an idea: BJ Pulitzers!
MikeJ
@stuckinred: I did mean it, but (Al Pacino) “they keep pulling me back in!” Let’s all be friends now and accept that voting rights are good, and were denied to too many people for too long.
And yes Yutsy, you are correct. I had passed the house stuck in my head, not ratified by the states, which is all that matters.
Anya
John, you’re a crank most of the time but an honest crank. I like how you stick to principles and never excuse racism. I can even overlook your crankiness towards Rosie and your tacky multi-colored chintz.
Jim Kakalios
Fortunately for the people of Tulia, Texas, SOMEONE did not find Bob Herbert boring, and paid attention to what he was saying:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/tx…
“In July 2000, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert launched a series of
columns about the Tulia cases, the first of which was headlined “Kafka in
Tulia.” Herbert’s columns, in Blakeslee’s view, shamed the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals — normally hostile to habeas claims — into
sending four cases back to the trial court for evidentiary hearings.”
Speaking for myself, I have done nothing
that has had such a direct effect on undoing such an injustice, and helping
strangers return to lives cruelly taken from them.
Herbert could have followed those columns on Tulia with nothing but pablum – and he would have my respect
forever for his efforts on Tulia. I had never heard of this situation
before his columns, and I will never forget them after reading them.
stuckinred
@MikeJ: I’m witcha babe!
no shit
ok, I’m new here, but I read this every goddamn day.
@ John Cole:
Amen, muthafukka…
BGinCHI
Late to the thread, but THIS is why I read this damn blog. Great post and thanks for saying what needs to be said. What’s bestest is that number 1 and 2 go together perfectly.
I do think the left needs a few pundit voices in major places who are more aggressive and challenge the beltway circle jerk/daisy chain media industrial complex.
suzanne
Certain things I can never forgive.
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
Since UA dropped Duke, they get my rooting power tonight. Plus, don’t like UConn.
asiangrrlMN
@Jim Kakalios: Your link is broken. You fix.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: It kinda felt like beating up, but I earwormed on this a week or so ago and things kinda sunk in. And why the hell has no one told me about Essra Mohawk before?
@asiangrrlMN: You persist in your trollophood. I couldn’t be prouder.
I somehow threw my lower back out, so it might not be obvious, but I r very cranky.
Comrade Luke
I think the reason Hebert gets knocked is because he points out what’s wrong, but doesn’t often propose solutions.
Is that bad? Not imo, but we’re talking about a bunch of elites who are used to:
– listed random problem
– propose solution of cutting taxes, “entitlements”, or invading a foreign country
– everything’s fixed!
They’re simple minded people, and they can’t process criticism unless the end result is a happy ending (that benefits them, of course).
Same goes for the criticism of Kristof; they can’t process a foreign intervention that doesn’t result in the U.S. being greeted as liberators and freshly-painted schools.
Mitch Guthman
When I read Sully’s post on Bob Hebert’s retirement, I thought to myself: Change liberal to conservative and Sully just wrote his own epitaph.
Maude
@WaterGirl:
No, she knew how to make legislation and how to get votes for it. Before she was speaker, she could get people together to oppose bad bills. She knew the House and how to go about things. You can knee kick under a table.
She used to speak about human rights abuses in China at a time when it was considered bad form to do so. She kept it up and didn’t stop.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I read that as, “I somehow threw my lover out…”, and I was wondering what you weren’t telling me. Sorry to hear you threw your back out. Ouch.
Trollop. I love that word and happily claim it.
kth
The thing about Ferraro is that her nomination is the exact predecessor of Sarah Palin’s: a desperate, failed gambit to avert a landslide. In a sane world, Palin’s claim upon fame would be no greater than Ferraro’s.
stuckinred
@asiangrrlMN: How bout Jezebel?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I guess it’s better than you reading it throwing my liver out, which would be A) messy and B) fatal. It’s that damn lack of proper interpretation of blog words thang again.
As far as the back goes, I’ll live. It should calm down in a day or two.
BGinCHI
@kth: Give it time. Palin’s time serving in the dustbin of history is coming soon enough.
Sharl
I was motivated by sufficient curiosity to find the working URL for the link in the comment by Jim Kakalios.
And yeah, that sad account ties together Bob Herbert’s best work and Ferraro’s privilege blindness quite nicely.
asiangrrlMN
@stuckinred: I always thought she got a bad rap. I also like hussy.
@Yutsano: Oooh, yeah. That would be an urban legend and fatal. Glad you did not throw out your liver, especially if it didn’t go rotten.
@Sharl: Thanks for that. What an amazing thing Herbert did. We need more like him–not fewer.
Comrade DougJ
@Mitch Guthman:
Very smart point.
Zuzu's Petals
@Josie:
Within hours of a person’s death? Sorry, I disagree…and am really disappointed in John’s post for that reason.
Think I’ll take a little break from the bile fest.
Jim Kakalios
@asiangrrlMN:
Sorry. Hope this works:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/txtuliasummary.html
Jim Kakalios
@asiangrrlMN:
Sorry. Hope this works:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/txtuliasummary.html
Seems ok now. Thanks fellow Minnesotan!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Maude: She was used in that she sold out to the Faux newsies, the old whoring bovine blowhard. I know, speaking ill of the dead is in poor taste, but fuck manners — John nailed it in his description of her. And Sully too,that crabby balding drama queen bitter over his birth class place in England, now come here to stir the ressentiment because he looks and sounds right to be aristocratic. Poseur.
jayboat
@BGinCHI:
Amen, bruddah.
Cole might be a cranky SOB, but he cranks the truth.
Sad Iron
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–nobody was ever too American or too average to be interesting to Bob Herbert. Sullivan and his crew can’t lift a finger to give a shit about Wisconsin, but if we were three Libyians with a Twitter feed, it would simply be breathtaking at The Dish. Bob Herbert cares about people, and that’s just not trite. In what world is that trite?
arguingwithsignposts
@jazzgurl:
You forgot other people’s windows and uncredited interns writing a lot of his british accented “Heh, Indeedy’s.” And helping give a stage to Conor Friedersdorffffff.
suzanne
@The Dangerman:
Ten years ago (holy shit), when I was a junior at UA, it came down to the Wildcats versus Duke in the final. I, along with most everyone else, went down to any one of the many college bars in Tucson to watch the game. After Duke won, crowds of students went out into the street for more drinking and general rowdiness. Started off peacefully, ended up with shit lit on fire, 17 arrests, and one dude blinded for the rest of his life from having his eye shot out by an officer of the Tucson PD who aimed directly at his face, rather than skip-firing the bullets off the ground. I ended up getting caught in a cloud of teargas, losing my shoes, and having to run almost a mile barefoot back to campus to get away from the insanity. Passed by some other police officers, who taunted me and my friends, who were doubled over choking and gasping for breath at this point (the gas they used is hell for asthmatics), by shouting “GO DUKE!” at us.
So, ever since, I take extra pleasure in Duke having their asses handed to them by UA.
gogol's wife
It appears I’m the only one who thinks Bob Herbert spent too much time in 2004 concern-trolling Kerry and has spent too much time since 2009 concern-trolling Obama. I never quite understood how he thought the things he wanted to happen (on which I agreed with him) would happen if Kerry lost or Obama was weakened. I wrote to him about this numerous times (never got an answer, but I guess I didn’t expect one).
asiangrrlMN
@Jim Kakalios: That really is amazing. That’s what good journalism can do–prod the powers that be to do the right thing. Unfortunately, we see so little of it these days.
Tom Q
@kth: I’m completely with you there. I remember being with friends the day the selection was announced, some of whom were really excited. But my feeling was, Great, now she can be the first losing female vice-presidential candidate — because it was plain as day Reagan was going to romp. Mondale had been criticized throughout the campaign for acting like he was processing a checklist — do this for the unions, this for African-Americans, etc., and it seemed like “women” was just the last item on his roster.
However…many women I know felt very differently about it; just the sight of Ferraro onstage at the convention and not being The Wife was inspiring to them. Since the campaign was hopeless anyway, maybe Mondale did a good thing, achieving a milestone at no real cost.
Of course, then Mondale deserves more of the credit than Ferraro.
Anne Laurie
Shirley Chisholm was my first political crush; Bella Abzug — whose writings introduced me to Chisholm — was my second.
And they both got kneecapped by the Sensible White Male Liberals, and the supporters of all things sensibly white male & liberal, in 1972. Watching how the Big Dicks in Charge treated Chisholm & Abzug & the other ‘wimmens libbers’ was a brutal, brutal shock to a lot of us, including many of the women politicians in the generation just behind those two pioneers. Some of the activists left politics permanently — at least until Hilary Clinton and, yes, Sarah Palin reignited the spark. Some of the politicians, and that includes Ferraro, vowed never to be (in the words of another populist politican who went badly wrong) out-n*******d again.
As I did say in my earlier post, setting women against people of color — claiming that there will never be more than one Minority Slot available, and that activists of good will have to choose one or the other — is a tactic that’s been used by “good liberals” going back to at least Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony. It’s a lesser variant on the mostly-conservative trope where one part of the working class (blue-collar men) are set against another part (women, people of color, immigrants) to the detriment of both. It “saved” slots for a lot of mediocre-to-lousy Demo-men over the last 30 years, at the cost of a steady erosion of the rights and benefits available to ALL of us.
What Ferraro says was unworthy of her, and by 2008 politically insane as well. But she’d spent her entire career, as she saw it, being told to wait her turn because “other minorities” were more worthy, more valuable, to the party she supported. It made her bitter and reckless… but it didn’t make her 100% wrong. President Obama has never pretended that his skin color didn’t get him just a little extra edge, a longer look, a few more votes in a life where every edge & every vote was crucial. We don’t honor his very genuine achievements by pretending that he rose frictionless through a system now blind to every variation of race, gender, or class.
OzoneR
welcome to Western Queens
mattt
@JC – Bravo on Ferarro.
The best that can be said about her, is that she normalized female pols as being just as scummy as the men.
Commish +5
OzoneR
@kth:
I don’t think Ferraro’s choice was a desperate gambit. I think if Mondale wanted to do that, he’d have chosen Martha Layne Collins. Can’t go wrong with a governor from Appalachia.
Ferraro was Mondale’s way of showing that he was resigned to his loss and wanted to go out being remembered for something.
gogol's wife
It appears I’m the only one who thinks that Bob Herbert spent too much time in 2004 concern-trolling Kerry and too much time since 2009 concern-trolling Obama. I never understood how he thought the things he wanted to happen (on which I agreed with him) were going to happen if Kerry lost and Obama were weakened. I’ve written to him about this several times (I never got an answer, but didn’t really expect one.) (For some reason this comment disappeared, but I suppose it may reappear and show up twice, for which I apologize.)
Comrade DougJ
@Anne Laurie:
“Other minorities”? Women are a majority of adults.
HRA
John, thank you for this very honest and very well written thread.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob Loblaw: It’s not like it’s particularly rare for white male Ivy Leaguers to go far in politics. “Brad Olson”‘s career wouldn’t have the same shape as Barack Obama’s, that’s for sure, but there’d sure be one.
Bob Loblaw
@gogol’s wife:
Were the things Herbert was saying true? You called him a concern troll. Do you think he was being duplicitous?
Because if he wasn’t, and the things he was saying were true, then if a President is made weaker by the truth that seems like it should be the President’s fault and not the observer’s.
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “the big Ed Begley-looking dink…”
LOL
Also, virtuoso rant about Ferraro, John.
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
John Edwards, George W. Bush, JFK, there are plenty of charismatic young white guys who became, or got close to, the presidency too. The fact that Obama was an accomplished law student, while the others I mentioned weren’t, doesn’t mean anything. It should be a point in his favor, no?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Anne Laurie: Your points about Obama’s realism are especially good, Anne Laurie, and I appreciate your making them. But I can’t help giving Mondale more credit for Ferraro’s gig than Ferraro herself. She was not a tenth the intellect or fighter that Bella Abzug or Barbara Jordan or Shriley Chisolm were, so I’m not gonna cry too hard that she’s gone. She was a nasty Queens crooked pol who happened to have a D after her name and got on a ticket. That’s all she ever really did, in my view.
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
I’m with you on this. I think Herbert was one of the few who criticized Obama without lapsing into “as bad as Bush” or “Hillary wouldn’t have done this” territory.
Anya
@Bob Loblaw:
So you’re telling us that every white politician works very hard to earn a place on the the top of the ticket while blacks get a leg up because of the color of their skin? I didn’t realize it was so hard being a white man. Those undeserving blacks, getting ahead because of their advantageous skin color.
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
If I was a Duke fan, I’d be pissed about how soon K pulled two of his stars; there was 2:01 on the clock, IIRC. A LOT can happen in two minutes (see Butler/Wisconsin). While I’m dogging on K, he almost cost them the championship last year by missing the free throw on purpose. Wrong call. So, joyed to see them get whacked.
Litlebritdifrnt
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I read him but I despise Sully, he is such a traitor to his working class roots, he is a traitor to his sexuality and he is a traitor to his very existance. The people he praises would more than likely be happy to see him dead, yet he sucks up to them. It is so pathetic.
gogol's wife
@Bob Loblaw:
I did not happen to agree with the things he said, no. But perhaps “gratuitous criticism” is a better term. For some reason, all the right-wing op-ed columnists in the NYT use all their space to criticize Obama, and all the left-wing columnists in the NYT use all their space to criticize Obama. I wish there were someone writing there who would use at least as much of their space to criticize the other side. Gail Collins is the only one who reliably does.
Bob Loblaw
@FlipYrWhig:
If they’re coming from the south, sure.
Meteoric rises just aren’t very common in midwestern or northeastern politics, but being from a minority bloc can be a huge positive in making it happen.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade DougJ: And yet, we’re still part of the “Minority” platform whenever politics & pundits gather. A minority of CEOs, political leaders, pundits, etc. There’s no White Male Slot, but when the first Not-White-Male position in any field is mooted, the fun part is always “So… who deserves this one precious unduplicateble entry? Maybe a Vagina-American… maybe an African-American… you two will just have to fight it out, because the system couldn’t possibly bear more than one TOKEN!”
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
JFK, Dan Quayle, Michelle Bachmann, when do you want me to stop?
Comrade DougJ
@Anne Laurie:
The answer here is not to think in terms of tokens. Nancy Pelosi was no token. Obama was no token.
The Ferraro-Pelosi comparisons aren’t so different from Obama-Jesse Jackson comparisons.
asiangrrlMN
@Anne Laurie: This comment is better than your front page post, but you are missing one word in your comment “white”. It goes in front of woman. White women against people of color. You forget that there are women of color who are not a part of the mainstream feminist movement and who do not benefit as much from affirmative action as do white women.
And, what you said about Obama and his race can also be said about Hillary and her gender. You don’t think she got votes because of her gender and HER race?
ETA: And a white woman or a black man will always get the edge over a woman of color or a queer. Or an atheist in politics. Obama was qualified. Hillary Clinton was qualified. Ferraro did not need to drag race into it.
Josie
@Zuzu’s Petals: Sorry that we see it differently. I am sick of the pundit’s propensity for glossing over politicians’ failings and making them saints because they died. I only hope that people tell the truth about me after I am gone. That is all we have a right to.
salacious crumb
@asiangrrlMN: agreed.
Maude
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Ferraro was savvy. She always knew what she was doing. I remember her very well. She was never any kind of victim.
Not that you were saying that, but to say that she was used in any way is false.
Because she was the VP candidate, Mondale didn’t stand a chance of winning the election.
Comrade DougJ
@asiangrrlMN:
That’s my take, too, Obama and Hillary were both qualified. End of story. Screw Ferraro for suggesting otherwise.
salacious crumb
oh dang, haha whatever happened to Harriet Christian? I am surprised she didnt get a job at Fox.
Lawnguylander
When Michelle Obama runs in 2020, is she going to be a double token? Those must be the luckiest so she’ll surely win.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@asiangrrlMN: How do you feel about strumpet? It’s kinda quaint, but… Of course, I used to drink weekly with a group who called ourselves the Lying Irish Whores, and one year I made lipbalms for everyone with that label for a holiday trinket.
Angry Black Lady
@Anne Laurie: your comment ignores that there are Vagina- and African-Americans.
I’m a token twofer, I reckon.
asiangrrlMN
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I like it quite a bit. But, it reminds me of crumpets for some reason. I am also quite fond of harlot. I like your sense of humor. Heh.
salacious crumb
@Maude: she also was a staunch supporter of Israel, human rights of Palestinians be damned..but then again if one wants to be a politician in the US, support of Israel’s policies is expected, no matter how heinous. But Im glad she decided to take a stance against a politically convenient football that is human rights in China
Catsy
So let me get this straight.
Shitty corrupt racist, alive: fair game for criticism.
Shitty corrupt racist, long dead: fair game for criticism.
Shitty corrupt racist, dead for 0-??? hours: beyond the pale to criticize.
Exactly what is it about the 0-??? hour interregnum following someone’s death that makes it unfair or uncivil to tell the unflattering truth about their legacy? Would you mind sharing where the cutoff point is where it becomes acceptable to tell the truth about them again?
This idiotic custom is how crappy people have their legacies posthumously whitewashed by their supporters. See, for example: Reagan.
dan
As to your two points, yes and yes.
Angry Geometer
And you can’t make a pearl without a grain of sand, or what? Are you saying he had it easier than a white person from a well-connected political family (like Ferraro), or did he have it harder?
Obviously you mean to imply he had it easier — one of those lucky ducky young bucks eating affirmative action T-bone steaks and getting all that free midnight basketball. Do you realize how racist YOU sound at this point? No, of course not. Hey, YOU’RE not the one waving the racist shibboleth around, you’re just pointing approvingly at someone doing it and saying they’re right to have said that.
Why the fuck do you even call yourself a progressive?
There isn’t an iota of difference between what you’re doing here and what Trent Lott said that got him booted from politics.
Please do BJ a favor and go write for Hillbuzz or some shit. Your “Obama supporters are the real racists for calling Ferraro’s racist statement racist” nonsense is tired as hell in addition to being offensive to just about anybody with a functioning brain.
Bob Loblaw
@Anya:
Working hard or not hard has nothing to do with it. In urban politics, it can actually be a huge advantage to belong to a minority group because of this nation’s latent racial/ethnic segregation. Black, Jewish, Hispanic, whatever. It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond if you can. This advantage goes away the bigger the elections get, but to find one’s start in politics it can be a huge help. Barack Obama deserved to become President because he was the best candidate. He was handed nothing. But like FlipYrWhig said well, his career has a vastly different arc and length if he was just another WASPy Ivy Leaguer.
It isn’t. But thank you for playing the stereotype of the panicky liberal on constant watch.
@Comrade DougJ:
Bachmann, really?
hilts
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She’s the senior domestic policy adviser for Michele Bachmann.
General Stuck
Well sure, Obama being black cinched a POTUS gig. Duh! Now You gonna tell me there’s no Easter Bunny, I bet. Morans.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Comrade DougJ: Exactly. Hilary and Obama could neither one be confused for tokens. But I’ll shut up about Ferraro because I’ve said all I really need to say; anything else is just being bitchy. And I also need to save commas in case Omnes is running short again.
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
How would you describe her ascent?
salacious crumb
@General Stuck: There is no Easter bunny? :-(
Msskwesq
Just to go on record here, as a late to the post commentor, I totally agree with every word you said, John. You hit it squarely on the head, especially about Mrs. Ferraro.
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: Did you see today’s story by the NYT columnist from the business page (who is moving to the op-ed page):
In Prison for Taking a Liar Loan
It sounds like he did some of his own research.
Warning: reading the article may make you very angry.
tkogrumpy
My one brief interaction with Ferraro left me with the impression that this was one cold hard piece of work.This was during her VP run and it appears she never softened up any.
asiangrrlMN
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Someone please to explain the comma and Omnes lack thereof? kthxbai.
@WaterGirl: Yeah. I saw that yesterday. I had to stop reading because it made me very very very mad. Very.
ETA: I’ve read him before. He’s good.
Angry Black Lady
@Anne Laurie: also, if you’re gonna say “nigger,” just say “nigger“.
Bob Loblaw
@Comrade DougJ:
Where would you say she’s ascended to?
She has relevance in some way I suppose, but no particular power. It’s more of a religious type rise than a political thing with her.
I could be proven wrong if she ends up VP or something a year from now, of course.
EnfantTerrible
Non detrahes mortuis.
(I will not speak ill of the dead.)
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie:
It has shocked me every time I have seen someone at Bj write something like this today. Any edge his skin color got him was more than outweighed by what that very same skin color cost him. That’s how I see it anyway.
Maude
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I have a few commas in reserve if you need.
I think we did well on Ferraro.
Allan
@Angry Geometer: I’m still stunned at her entry into this thread, with its incredibly ugly use of the N-word, even starred and coyly attributed to others. It was gratuitously ugly, needlessly offensive, and willfully divisive.
cay
Thanks for writing the obvious, given every resource to investigate reality.
Anya
@Anne Laurie: You’re making excuses for Ferraro. Your comment reminds me of the movie Crash. There’s a scene where the racist cop, excuses his racism because his father was passed over for a minority or something to that affect. When was Ferraro “told to wait her turn” because other minorities? She was selected as a VP candidate and before that she was in congress. What did this rich white woman lose to minorities that made her so bitter? I am genuinely interested. Also if blacks have it so good in the Democratic Party and the voters prefer black candidates, why aren’t there more black governors and senators? You are really excusing her claim that Obama was getting some special consideration because he is a black man. She became so bitter because black men were getting all the breaks, at the expense of white women?
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
I am getting ahead of myself I suppose. My guess is she runs and goes pretty well, maybe winning Iowa.
hilts
@BGinCHI:
It can’t happen soon enough. John McCain should rot in hell for plucking this knuckledragging neanderthal and babbling buffoon out of obscurity and inflicting her on the country.
General Stuck
@WaterGirl:
Agree fully. I expect the wingnuts to use it, cause they are the opposition and prone to sling anything they can find against the wall for advantage. But liberals saying it is either deeply stupid, or deeply dubious in some other way.
Maude
@Angry Black Lady:
I have to mention that I will Never, Ever forgive Hillary Clinton for leaving the voluteer email, that said Obama was a Muslim Terrorist, out there long enough to take hold. And then she disavowed it. It is still used againd Obama. It also was shifted into other vicious forms against Mrs. Obama.
salacious crumb
per Chris Rock at SNL:
fraught
I had a personal verbal back and forth once with Ferraro in a jury pool holding room. She was a person with no center, just ambition and a credible resume for a time. Her racist remarks during the ’08 campaign were not surprising.
hilts
@Comrade DougJ:
Michele Bachmann Turner couldn’t pass the US citizenship test if her life depended on it.
Allan
@Anya: Thank you. Well said.
I found Anne Laurie’s initial post to be somewhat repellent with its prebuttal of any meaningful comments about the racially insensitive undercurrent that ran through Ferraro’s political career.
But in this thread I’m genuinely offended by the extent to which she seems determined to out-Ferraro Ferraro.
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: yeah, I thought I was very very very mad when I read that story until I read the story of the woman from a rebel area in Libya who had been tied up and raped by 15 men, found her way to some reporters in Tripoli, told them she had been beaten and raped and then was dragged away from the reporters by men from the Libyan government. I thought i had reached the pinnacle of angry for the day until I read that she was dragged away from the reports WHO WERE TRYING TO INTERVIEW HER. They weren’t trying to save her; they just wanted to interview her.
Edit: I am reminded of when Bella Abzug came to speak on my campus when I was in college. I will never forget one thing she said: “I have always had a strong sense of outrage.”
CynDee
Oh, John Cole, you are so eloquent! How I love a Real Man!
I just had a great supper that made me feel really good, and now your truthful and inspiring thoughts — makes me want to quit giving up and go out and do my best. Thank you.
hilts
@salacious crumb:
Thanks for the Chris Rock quote.
asiangrrlMN
@WaterGirl: Yes. That second story put me pretty much over the edge for the day. It’s just…yeah. Outrage is too soft a word for how I feel about that.
Maude
@WaterGirl:
I couldn’t read the Libyan story, I just couldn’t. How horrible.
@efgoldman:
Yeah, you’re right, but she cinched the loss. I so wish he had won.
JPL
Ferraro sold her soul to Fox News and to their audience. It gave her an opportunity to pretend her opinions were worthy.
BTW .. The Presidents skin color did not affect my vote at all. I voted for him because I thought he was the most qualified.
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: I had to get up and take a shower after I read that story. Water calms me, and it’s still too early for the pool to be open, so i had to do what I could, which was take a shower. So much of what is happening is SO wrong.
@salacious crumb: I love Chris Rock. He’s not just funny; he does some of the best social commentary around. And with the CAPS in the quote from Chris Rock, I could just hear him saying those words.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@Angry Black Lady:
Wouldn’t that be Vaginated Americans? Where my pedants at?
salacious crumb
@WaterGirl: actually he did say that…i assumed most of us who follow politics have seen the video…
http://www.glumbert.com/media/chrisrocksnl
eemom
@WaterGirl:
absofuckinglutely right.
A while back I made a whimsical little comment about John sending the real AL off on a kitty rescue mission and sneaking in Jane Hamsher under her name. Maybe I’m not so crazy after all.
Nah. Couldn’t be that. More likely, I’m afraid, AL is basically channeling the bitterness of Ferraro that she refers to above which is evidently the bitterness of her own as well. That is unfortunate.
Anne Laurie
@asiangrrlMN:
No, I think trying to split the women’s coalition by insisting that Chisholm had to choose between “her people” and “those white women” — like her friend & fellow fighter, Abzug — was yet another example of The White Dicks playing “let’s you’n’her fight, cuz either way, * I * win.”
The other natural fracture line within the coalition, as the pundits put it, was Boring Old Bureaucrats versus Vibrant Youth. This worked just great to divide the First Wave feminists, the suffragettes, from their daughters & granddaughters during the Jazz Age. It worked pretty damned well for Nixon & his CREEPsters, when they converted class warfare into a fight between “hard hats” and “hippies”. And it derailed a lot of the civil rights movement when the Black Power separatists were encouraged to dismiss their elders as “Uncle Toms” who were willing to work with “the man”, i.e., guilty white liberals, especially Jewish liberals.
White women have not been immune to the dog-whistling of color-privilege. But harping on the distinction between “our” out-group and “your” out-group is a weapon of our mutual enemies.
asiangrrlMN
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel): You can get a what-what! I thought you were changing back to Jewish Steel. Harrumph.
@WaterGirl: I didn’t actually read the story. I read all the headlines and the twits about it. And it made me go to a place of deep outrage. I just can’t….Sigh.
rikyrah
I loved the bitchslap of Sully.
WaterGirl
@salacious crumb: Not quite sure what you mean by “actually he did say that”. I wasn’t doubting that you had quoted him correctly, I was just trying to say that the CAPS gave the emphasis that allowed me to hear his voice in my head as I read the quote.
I will happy watch the video now.
Comrade DougJ
@Allan:
Take it down a notch, you don’t need to be that much of an asshole to Anne Laurie.
Tom Q
@WaterGirl: To back you up, consider: the country as a whole moved a net 12 presidential percentage points to the Democrats between 2004 and 2008. But one area of the country — essentially the Appalachian valley, including Southern OH & PA, KY, TN, AS — swung sharply the other direction. What other reason for that but Obama’s race? It’s great that huge African America turnout bumped certain parts of the country, but, given Bush’s historic unpopularity, I have to feel Biden alone would probably have got 55-60%.
eemom
@hilts:
I have gotten to the point where I think rotting in hell for all eternity is too good for him.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@CaseyL:
She was the Democrats Palin of that era. Her and Mondale weren’t referred to as “Fritz & Tits” for nothing…lol! Regarding her issues with race, I hate to say it but the country will be a better place with her departure, as it will be when others like her pass on. I can tolerate a lot of things from people but racism is not one of them. That’s a deal breaker for me.
On Herbert, the Village Idiots aren’t impressed with him because he writes about subjects that really matter, rather than subjects that matter only to themselves (and their paycheck/career). In their haughty opinions, Herbert may write about important stuff but they write about REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF!! It’s clear to the Village Idiots that they are serious about stuff and that Herbert’s “motives were obviously honorable, his compassion deep, and his solutions sincere, if invariably trite,”.
Good post John.
salacious crumb
@WaterGirl: sorry it was just bad English..i meant to say there was video of it and you can see him saying it. my bad.
Anne Laurie
@Angry Black Lady: See my comment to AsiangrrlMN. When you & I fight, the Reason-nerds
get a stiffywin.eemom
@Comrade DougJ:
why? Because she is a Very Serious Front Pager?
How come you never say that when people are assholes out the wazoo to ABL?
gil mann
Pretty minor point in the scheme of this post, but uh… you remember Walter Mondale, right? I do, and that remembrance is why I’m about to fall asleep at 9:30 on a Friday night.
EDIT: Christ, it’s Saturday. So I’m not just homebody-old, I’m senile-old.
Allan
@Comrade DougJ: And you don’t get to decide how offended I should feel. But thanks for the feedback.
asiangrrlMN
@Anne Laurie: Nope. Sorry. It’s also part of the feminist movement that insists that the white women’s problems were the most important problems of the day. It was as if we had to check in our color the minute we stepped in the feminist door. Did it happen in the racial communities, too? Did racial affiliations say, “Put race ahead of feminism?” Of course, especially back in the day. That’s why I didn’t hang out much with either group. Your whole comment on this post is about white women v. African Americans because we know that no woman of color would stand a chance.
And, the fact that Ferraro thought she deserved to be next in line or white women did is similar to McCain’s sense of entitlement that he deserved to be president. It’s all about a sense of entitlement.
Bottom line: Obama and Clinton were both able candidates. There was no reason for Ferraro to drag race into it.
And, you can’t just say the white man wins if we fight if we are not actually fighting for the same thing.
WaterGirl
@salacious crumb: No problem! Thanks for the link to the video, I had not seen that one.
salacious crumb
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Having worked in corporations (in US), when corporations say they wanna put minorities in executive positions, it almost 99% of time means white women. Im not saying the white women didnt deserve it, Im just saying corporations would rather promote them over another colored man or women. You go to the call center of any corporation in the US, they are all minorities, but as you go up the ladder it just becomes more white and more homogeneous. the country has made progress, but we still have a long way to go
Bob Loblaw
@gil mann:
Where exactly are you living where it’s still Friday?
Anne Laurie
@Angry Geometer:
Because I can respect a politician, a Democrat, like President Barack Obama, who worked very hard & used every tiny scrap of advantage he could winkle to become The First Black POTUS. This is a helluvan achievement. Pretending that every single person around him, from his birth in Hawaii to this very afternoon, somehow mistook him for just another neutral-tinted Smart Political Person, cause we’re all colorblind (yay us!) is ahistorical as well as silly.
Ferraro let her history sour and corrupt her, which didn’t help the Democrats but was damned useful to Roger Ailes. To reiterate: When the pundits manage to start intra-Democratic warfare between Women/People of Color (or Baby Boomers/Gen Xers) it’s always a win for the wrong side. Our mutual enemies.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel): Indeed it would be Vaginated Americans; no hypen required.
Anya
@Bob Loblaw: Being a minority urban politician can give you some advantages for certain offices and it might make you a mover and a shaker in local politics, but it seldom translates into a higher office.
Also, too, when you make a flippant comment about race without a proper context, you’ve earned yourself a sarcastic remark.
John Cole
@Allan:
Oh, shut the fuck up. I’m about sick and tired of your pissy little hall monitor bullshit. At least with Matoko-Chan, I couldn’t understand her so it didn’t bother me. You, I understand, which makes me dislike you even more. Don’t you have another blog where you can go monitor the comments for things that get your knickers in a twist?
@Allan:
She isn’t trying to out-Ferraro Ferraro, she’s trying to explain to people like me, who wrote a scathing post about Ferraro, why she was who she was and how old battles may have scarred her. And she isn’t even excusing her, saying her comments were inappropriate. Frankly, I don’t buy it, and I happen to think that Ferraro was from an overly white Queens district and knew what she had to do to get elected, and that included race-baiting and pitting whites against blacks. But Anne Laurie’s making an argument, dealing with the history of the feminist movement and the civil rights movements, and the tensions created between the two by external forces.
If you weren’t so god damned intent on clutching your smelling salts while reaching for the fainting couch, all the while trying to establish what you think should be the order for this blog’s comment section, you would see that. I’ve had it up to hear with your crap, and those of us who have been around comments sections and usenet and listserv’s recognize you for what you are. Now back off Anne Laurie.
And don’t bother sending me a whiny email. I won’t read it.
JPL
Anne L.. I really enjoy a lot of your posts, but ..
I’m confused by your statement. Do you mean that because we are all brothers or sisters in arms, that we can’t offer criticism?
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@asiangrrlMN: Me & Yutsy are celebrating the melting pot
Allan
@John Cole: No problem. It appears that many of your other commenters are giving her the holy hell she earned for her remarks, and I have confidence in their ability to demolish her. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
the pundits didn’t start this. You did.
I’m sorry, but this strikes me as an extremely disingenuous response. You came out today on your own post, guns ablazin’, with how great (though flawed) Ferraro was. You dismissed criticism of her as CW “yelling PUMA.” Now, in this thread, you’ve basically come out and said you don’t blame her for the things she said about Obama because there was justification to her bitterness.
I and others have a lot of problems with those sentiments, and you don’t get to just blow the whole thing off by singing kumbaya after the horse has left the barn door.
asiangrrlMN
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel): So, you are Ionian?
@eemom: Right on. Well said.
gil mann
@Bob Loblaw:
Far away in the magical land of MAYBE YOU WOULD’VE SEEN THAT I CAUGHT AND EDITED THAT IF YOU WEREN’T SO QUICK TO JUMP DOWN MY THROAT.
What the original settlers lacked in mellifluity they made up for in prescience.
Sharl
The idea that that there weren’t already strains of racism and other unpleasant isms* among women’s movements would seem to run contrary to existing evidence. The patriarchal powers-that-be didn’t have to work hard to take advantage – when they had to work at it at all** – they just had to find the existing fissures – created by a patriarchal social system, to be sure – insert chisel, and apply a gentle tap.
*e.g., the Lavender Menace
**for example, the uproar among “women-of-color” (WOC) bloggers caused by the illustrations in the original release of Amanda Marcotte’s 2008 book
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Bob Loblaw: “Honestly, the first part of that quote by itself is probably true.”
Shorter Bob Loblow: I agree with Geraldine but I wouldn’t have said what she said afterward.
You can try to hide it but it’s futile.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Holla back, my pedantifier!
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie:
I have the same question I had above. Do you think that, on balance, being black was actually an advantage for Barack Obama and that being black made it easier for him to get elected president? If the answer is yes, I would very much like to understand in what ways you think that was an advantage.
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@asiangrrlMN: No. I celebrate our cultural debt to Greece. Greek Independence Day was the 25th Oopah!
Bob Loblaw
@gil mann:
You sound suspiciously unsleepy there.
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Yes, yes, I’m a real racist because I don’t think it’s an unbearable burden to be able to find acceptance and standing in a well defined community instead of a shapeless one. Being black hurt Obama’s chance of ever becoming President. It didn’t hurt him becoming a viable politician with a bright future from the second he left law school.
Which one was I talking about? Well clearly it doesn’t matter, because I’m just a racist so fuck it. Shrugs.
eemom
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel):
yer suuuuch a sweetie! In the fine tradition of asiangrrl and Yutsy, I think I will ask you to marry me.
asiangrrlMN
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel): Awesome! It garnered you a marriage proposal!
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@eemom: D’aw shucks.
I’m afraid my heart belongs to the lady on the right.
eemom
@WaterGirl:
I have, also, this question: what is the evidence that Obama’s blackness was one of those “tiny scraps of advantage he could winkle” that he USED?
I suppose — though I don’t know — that he may have checked the African American box on the “Race” question of his college and law school apps. Is that “using”?
How exactly did he use that particular scrap thereafter? Just by being black?
hilts
@eemom:
eemom,
Great post! I second your sentiments.
Anne Laurie
@WaterGirl:
Of course not. It’s still easier for a white man than a Black man to rise through the political “ranks”, as well as the business ranks, etc. BUT once Barack Obama worked & fought from ‘Democratic primary contender’ to ‘Democratic candidate’, are we gonna pretend that nobody — well, not us, anyways — just happened to notice that he was black? And that electing him President would put the first Black President in the White House? And that this didn’t excite and enpower a whole lotta people? Because, y’know, I think that fact may have been mentioned once or twice, just in passing.
Successful politicians are the ones who use their every distinction as an advantage. Barack Obama, having been born with all the disadvantages of being “black” (and poor, and the child of an essentially single teenage mother), used his considerable gifts to fight his way to the top of the political pyramid, not just in America but globally. People, some of them here at BJ, said they’d crawl over broken glass to vote for Obama in 2008. I like John Kerry (hell, I was one of the three women in America who thought Mike Dukakis was sexy), but neither Kerry nor Dukakis ever inspired one-one-hundredth of that kind of devotion. This is why “President Barack Obama” will always have a special place in the history books, and the other guys will have a special place in ‘Trivial Pursuit, Political Edition’.
KrisK
@Catsy: Well, since you asked: The difference is that right now, there are real people, her friends, her grandchildren, their friends etc., who are feeling a personal loss of a loved one. And so I’d feel really douchey if they caught me being “candid” and it made them feel worse. Because whatever Ferraro was politically, she was someone who, for those people, helped hold back the coldness and emptiness of the world and provided them love. Both my parents are dead and I can hear criticism of them now; but you know, the week they died? Really? It means that much to you (and Cole) that your voice be heard right the hell now?
That’s the difference to me. Life is not all politics. It’s also life and death, eh?
Yutsano
@eemom: Welcome to the fine pleasures of Denobulan marriage. You can sleep with any partner either inside OR outside of it, as the marriage is just a bond of deep friendship and goodwill.
eemom
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel):
fair ’nuff. I would never venture to compete with a fine doggie.
salacious crumb
@Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel): my heart belongs to her
Suck It Up!
Obama’s been on the scene for how many years? 4,5,7 Why is still being reduced to his skin color or the fact that he gives good speeches? He’s accomplished quite a bit in a short time and all some people can say is that he is lucky and black?
Parallel 5ths (Ionian Steel)
@salacious crumb: Gah! You gave my ticker a jump. That’s actionable. Get burnspbesq on the line!
oondioline
People who get pissed off at this post are the same assholes who couldn’t stand anyone pointing out that Saint Elizabeth Edwards was a two-faced liar willing to ride her “husband” to whatever, regardless of the consequences.
Go fuck yourself.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Can anybody explain to me why anybody reads Sullivan in the first place? His primary contribution to western intellectual discourse appears to be reposting photographs he found on Google Images. If all you want to do is read something that pisses you off and then write blog posts about how pissed off you are, he isn’t even very interesting in that sense. For me he occupies roughly the same territory as reality TV shows. Anybody? What’s going on?
Karen
Up until she belched her bile about Obama and how only his race got him this far, I didn’t know about PUMA. I still had this naive feeling that we were all on the same side because we were all Democrats. I wasn’t completely naive and knew that racism was a big problem. But I didn’t realize that Obama would be hated because the Geraldine Ferraros of the Democratic party felt that he didn’t wait his turn. I didn’t know Ferraro could be so ugly with her hatred and contempt.
It’s a horrible way for her to die, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And yes, I feel badly for her family. As a human being, I’m sorry she died.
That’s as far as my regret goes.
ruemara
@Anne Laurie:
President Obama has never pretended that his skin color didn’t get him just a little extra edge, a longer look, a few more votes in a life where every edge & every vote was crucial.
You’re saying Obama says his skin color got him votes? It was an advantage? Really? I like your posts so I’m going to make a point of ignoring this opinion. It’s your right to have it, but it’s disappointing.
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie:Annie Laurie, thanks for the answer to my questions. I will have to give some more thought to what you said, but I have a couple of initial comments.
One thing that stood out was the phrase “considerable gifts”. I believe that it was only Barack Obama’s considerable gifts that allowed our country to elect a black man as president. Well, that and McCain and Palin being on the other ticket. While canvassing in Indiana, one man said “Well, I guess I’m gonna have to vote for the …” I’m sure you can fill in the blank for the word that was at the end of that sentence.
I am one of those people who would have crawled over broken glass to vote for Obama. But my desperately wanting this man to be president had nothing to do with his being black. It had everything to do with his considerable talents. I live in IL so I was lucky enough to get to meet him when he was running for Senate, and all I can say is that when you see him in a small room, it’s obvious that you are in the presence of greatness. At least that’s how it was for me, and I thought from that very day that Obama would be president at some point, though I didn’t know if it would be in my lifetime.
The last thing I want to say is that I had kind of an “aha’ moment when I read what you wrote. I’m not sure if I’m right or not, but after reading in your last paragraph (where you compared Obama to Kerry and said that Obama never inspired one-one-hundreth of the devotion it would take to say you’d crawl over broken glass to vote for Obama)…I wondered if you think being black must have been part of how Obama got elected because you didn’t think he was that great, so there must have been some other reason he was elected than on his own merits.
General Stuck
It excited some people, but I doubt a lot of people. And even more people that should have been excited due to his abilities and smarts, still pulled the lever for Ebenezer Scrouge and The Wicked Witch of the West. Despite the former president and his wingnut party polling close to the Hitler.
The excitement was mostly on the surface, but I suspect, when voting time came, a lot of people had to grit their teeth and vote obama, where it would have been easy to pull that lever if he didn’t have black skin. They did so against centuries of fear and prejudice handed down from their white ancestors, like keepsakes and trinkets in last wills and testaments.
It was enough to win, but not by much, when it should have been by much. I suspect there would have been similar qualms with voting for the first woman, if Hillary had gotten the nod, but we can’t know that. Some folks worried when she postured to blow up Iran, and all the other over heated rhetoric she threw out there to counter the meme of do you trust a woman with nuclear weapons. That’s a different calculus than taking a chance on a lazy inadequate black man fear, and all the other waking nightmares white people conjure up to turn away from black skin. I think she would have been a good president, if not for the clown circus of rasputin’s following her around, and Bill with his pecker on high intern alert, again, in the WH>
hitchhiker
@WaterGirl:
Do you think that Obama would have won South Carolina in the 2008 primary if he had been a white man, and all else had been the same?
WaterGirl
@General Stuck: I agreed with everything you wrote except where you said you thought Clinton would make a good president.
See my second paragraph at 216 as an example of what you talked about in your par #2.
General Stuck
@WaterGirl:
I didn’t actually say Hillary would have been a good president, only that I thought she would have been if separated from the Clinonistas that surrounded her campaign and would have done the same if she were POTUS. Not to put too much emphasis on advisors, but in the Clinton case, I think it is warranted due to the scurrilous nature of about all of them.
Anya
@John Cole:
What old battles? She was a privileged white woman who received all the advantages her privilege awarded her. I am sure, as a woman in politics, she’s experienced great deal of sexism, no doubt from white male. But what battles did she lose to other minorities that made her so bitter. That line of argument is a hogwash. I am not buying it, nor are you.
You should not be bullying Allan like that, it’s extremely unfair of you, Cole.
eemom
@General Stuck:
cracked me up, that did.
WaterGirl
@hitchhiker: That’s a tough one, because Bill was so popular in SC. But the advantage Obama had in SC was balanced, I think, by the disadvantage in Iowa and NH, which are lily white.
What impressed me is that Iowa went for Obama. It was a little rocky for a couple of days in Iowa after Obama made the comment about the farmers chewing a piece of straw that ask really smart questions. It was the Iowa equivalent of Biden remarking that Obama was clean and articulate.
That’s why I think it’s funny when people say they think SP could win Iowa. The folks in Iowa are really paying attention, and I don’t think for a minute that they would take SP seriously. Not more than 27% of them, at least.
While I was working in Iowa on primary night, I saw a whole lot of people switching from R to D (you can do that on voting day) to vote for Obama.
Bob Loblaw
@WaterGirl:
This argument is hampered by the fact the Obama administration is 90% composed of old Clinton administration people. Especially economically. So I don’t see how you could expect Hillary to have done too much worse, at least (or maybe only) domestically, given that Nancy Pelosi still would’ve been driving legislative action as well.
KS in MA
@WaterGirl: Well said. Thank you.
WaterGirl
@General Stuck: I lost all respect for Clinton when she lied about the whole “taking fire” at the airport in whatever country it was. I thought she looked like a food and I couldn’t imagine how other world leaders could take her seriously after that. I was wrong about that, though, because he seems to have gravitas on the world stage.
I do agree that there would have been a whole lot of drama with the Clintons in the white house again.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl:
Starch?
WaterGirl
@eemom: AL says below that she believes the advantage was that the idea of a black president excited and empowered “a whole lotta people”. Since white people might have been excited, but not empowered, by having a black president, that kind of sounds like a dog whistle to me, so I am back where I started. Which is disappointed. So I find myself agreeing with what ruemara said below. In fact, maybe she said it better than I could.
@ruemara:
salacious crumb
@WaterGirl: at that point you lost respect for Clinton?..Im surprised it took that long …for me it was her support of the Iraq war..look Hillary was no fool. she was smart and well accomplished, and was a lawyer for WalMart (they just dont hire any schmuck of the street to do their dirty work). She knew her husband was bombing the smithereens out of Iraq on a day to day basis, (the US and UK air force were basically enforcing a no fly zone there after the 1991 Gulf War), and the CIA spooks were all over in Iraq keeping a watch on Saddam. The guy had basically been neutered and he resorted to writing bad poetry in his old age and forcing his citizens to read and appreciate it..Hillary knew that even if there was the slightest sniff of biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq, the CIA and Mossad would running alerts like they are now doing with Iran..yet she supported this war…
hilts
@Corner Stone:
More like a rumproast.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: LOL!
Damn this site redesign. The print is so big in my browser that I have to make it smaller, and then the type in the comment box is so tiny that I don’t catch my mistakes. yeah, that’s it, it’s not my fault.
Allan
@Anya: Thank you for that. It was kind, and brave, of you to say, and I salute you.
WaterGirl
@salacious crumb:
Okay, you’ve got me there! It didn’t. I never thought she would be a good president, I should have said she lost all credibility as a presidential candidate at that point. But there’s no point in stirring up old wounds about Clinton, so I was trying not to go there. I guess that also means I will resist the urge to launch into all the things that offended me during her campaign. (biting my tongue)
Ija
@Anne Laurie:
Technically, women are not “minorities”. How can we be when we are 50% of the population?
Is that really a widespread phenomena? Hey, white woman, wait your turn, it’s the black guy’s turn first. Then the Hispanic guy, then the black woman, then the Hispanic woman, followed by Asian man, then Asian woman.
I guess white women are the most repressed minorities of them all. Since the lack of pigmentation on their skins made their plights so invisible to everyone and all. I understand now why the early feminist movement was so focused on the plights of white women. They are the worst off of all the minorities. White women, still being repressed in 2011.
salacious crumb
@WaterGirl: agreed.
Angry Black Lady
@asiangrrlMN: +1. anne, you can’t talk about our mutual enemies when white women have in the past been the enemy of black men and women.
you could walk into a room of white women and probably feel immediately at home.
i walk into a room of white women and i don’t think “sweet! vaginas!” i’m looking for colored faces… even male ones.
this is the problem with feminism. the marginalizing of women of color.
Corner Stone
@salacious crumb:
He had also gotten more zealously religious in his final years. Not saying he believed it, but he certainly pushed it as if he did.
And once again, HRC is the only politician who will ever pay a price for her AUMF vote.
You think she could have done otherwise?
There can be no doubt by now that if Obama had been Senator Obama at the time he would have made the same vote.
Just tired of this ridonkulous bullshit.
Ija
@Anne Laurie:
Then the system is to blame, not the African American for “stealing” the slot from women. Why the fuck was Ferraro blaming Obama?
Wow, I thought we are over this oppression marathon thing. It’s so tedious. And I say that as a woman.
Corner Stone
@hilts: With cankles? Or cleavage?
She’s stout, right? Get it? Get it?
Angry Black Lady
@Sharl: the marcotte dust-up is exactly what comes to mind when i think of online feminism. it’s not an inclusive group, or at least it’s not until it’s convenient to start talking about our mutual enemies.
then we colored ladies are supposed to rise up with our white sistren.
Corner Stone
@Comrade DougJ: Her ascent to what?
FlipYrWhig
I guess I’m not entirely sure if the discussion about advantages and disadvantages Obama derived from his race and skin color is supposed to be weighing him against Hillary Clinton in particular (which is the way some of the discussion has gone) or against Generic Politician (which is the way other parts of the discussion has gone).
salacious crumb
i think this debate between Melissa Harris Lacewell and Gloria Steinem gives us a pretty good idea of the some of the distrust between feminists of minority background and white feminists
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/14/race_and_gender_in_presidential_politics
Bob Loblaw
@Corner Stone:
No way. Not as the only black Senator. Besides, Illinois was a pretty safe haven too for courage.
The only liberal Senators who voted for the war were the ones who wanted to be President in 2004.
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
I skimmed over this the first time through, but after I watched some CNN, it popped back up in my mind. What are you meaning by Ferraro’s “entire career”? What was the period of time during which she was seething over being told to wait her turn?
WaterGirl
@Angry Black Lady: Isn’t asiangrlMN, um, asian? So why would you assume that she would immediately be at home in a sea of white faces, if you aren’t?
Angry Black Lady
@WaterGirl: i was agreeing with asiangrrl’s comment and addressing the balance of the comment to anne.
Ija
@Angry Black Lady:
But we shouldn’t talk about that EVER, because if we do, the evil white men win. We should just shut up and pretend we are all holding hands and singing kumbaya to stick it to white men.
WaterGirl
@Angry Black Lady: Ah. Now I understand. That didn’t come across since the only link in your comment was to @asiangrrlMN.
Anya
@Ija:
When the term minority is used, it’s about access to power, rather than numbers. That’s why some sociologists use the term “minoritized” and “racialized”
Anya
@Allan: I am sorry you had to face Cole’s unwarranted anger alone. I don’t know why he targeted you. You were entitled to your feelings.
FlipYrWhig
@Ija: If you put it that way, it almost sounds like the dreaded “Clap Harder,” doesn’t it?
slag
Pains me to say it, but I’m totally agreeing with everything in this post.
And I’m also thanking my lucky stars I’m not old enough to care about this black v. white feminism nonsense. News flash, geniuses: While you’re busy arguing over a single slice of pizza, the average white guy over there is running off with the other seven (or whatever that damn metaphor was). Surf the third wave!
Corner Stone
@Anya: What the fuck?
Anne Laurie
@WaterGirl:
No, I believe President Barack Obama is definitely the most skilled American politician of my adult life (I’m not sufficiently educated to rank him globally, although obviously he’d score highly in any company). And quite possibly the smartest, previous Rhodes Scholars notwithstanding. To paraphrase the old sexist joke against the Clintons, if Barack Obama had been born with two X chromosomes, we’d currently be living under the first female POTUS.
Corner Stone
@slag:
I normally only have two slices, and am good with sharing.
WaterGirl
@FlipYrWhig: Not sure about everyone else, but I got into the discussion because I was offended by a couple of comments on BJ today, such as this one:
I believe that any edge President Obama’s skin color got him was more than outweighed by what his skin color cost him.
I was offended when Geraldine Ferarro said it in 2008 and I was offended when Anne Laurie and others seemed to be saying it again today. I like Anne Laurie, but I do see that as a racist comment, even though I don’t think she sees what she said is racist.
Edit: well, now I see Anne Laurie’s comment @ 255, which certainly leaves a different impression than the earlier comments. Maybe it’s time to put the computer away and have some kitty lap time.
Anya
@Corner Stone: ?
Ija
@slag:
Meh. I think it’s too easy to call it nonsense and then say we shouldn’t fight because if we do, white men will win. There are important divisions and disagreements between liberals too on issues that matter, should we pretend there aren’t any because we don’t want conservatives to win?
ETA: Of course, it’s a lot easier for a white feminist to say we shouldn’t fight, we should just all get along so we are not divided by men etc etc. They are not the ones who have been marginalized.
WaterGirl
@Anne Laurie:
This, I can agree with!
slag
@Ija:
OK. Let’s go with that. Care to share exactly which important issues white women and women of color have to disagree about? And please be specific.
Angry Black Lady
@WaterGirl: yeah, i tried to go back and add anne’s name. not sure if it took!
hilts
@WaterGirl:
No way! Don’t bail out now. The back and forth over Geraldine Ferraro’s legacy can’t end until this thread hits 350 posts.
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie:
MICHELLE OBAMA 2016!!
(I’m only half-joking.)
gil mann
NOTE TO FUTURE ME: Yeah, I dunno, dude, weighing in on this seemed like a good idea at the time. Sorry.
…
A Democrat was going to win in 2008. If Obama was white, he still would’ve beat McCain, but he wouldn’t’ve crushed him.
Here are the people that account for the crushing:
1. A good chunk of the youth vote, specifically yutes who are overwhelmingly liberal but don’t really give a shit and need their politics sexed up a little or else they’re sleeping in that Tuesday. A not white dude who rocks a pair of shades fits the bill. A woman does too, but Hillary was probably seen as too establishment to tap the full power of that.
2. Minority voters who hadn’t been up to that point, not that they were, like, opposed to voting for a white person, just that seeing a hint of their own experience in a national candidate gave ’em that extra impetus.
3. Racists.
4. Yeah, no, seriously, racists. I mean, not the hardcore genetic-superiority types, more like the John-Turturro-in-Do-the-Right-Thing types, and if you think I’m wrong you are seriously underestimating the size of the “he speaks so well” vote. I mean yeah, Obama’s way eloquent for a politician, so no matter what he’d be first and foremost the guy that could fuckin’ talk, but you don’t think that maybe a sizable amount of white people were a little too impressed with his public-speaking skills? We remember when the Republicans wanted to recruit Powell through the lens of their ham-handedness, but they weren’t wrong about his chances.
Probably a little bit of overcompensation going on there too, like how my racist uncle always keeps me up to date on hilarious things Chris Rock says in interviews.
Look, I don’t want to downplay the number of votes he lost by being black–well, okay, I totally do, being all white and stuff that shit’s embarrassing–but I still say it’s a net gain.
Your mileage not only may vary, it invariably will. Whatever, he won, he’s gonna do it again. And hopefully someone’ll peel off and go after me, because watching you all going after each other–and a corpse–makes me sad.
slag
@gil mann:
Future You shakes head and sighs.
Angry Black Lady
this is what women of color are usually told. i remember reading this post and i have read it many times since:
I’m sick of this cycle. I’m sick of seeing white women dismiss the concerns of women of color. I’m sick of our self-righteous claims of inclusivity while we marginalize the voices of women of color when they speak out. We marginalize them if they do it with anger, or do it in the wrong way, or do it while disagreeing with us, or #%$@cking do it at all. I’m sick of us exercising our white privilege and then accusing our sisters of color of causing divisiveness when they refuse to submit to our racism. Mostly it’s unintentional racism by white women who want to believe that we are saving the world. But we are not. We’re oppressing and silencing the very people we talk so eloquently about being allies with. I’m sick of seeing so many of us refuse to take a stand for fear of alienating our white sisters. We are the enemy and the oppressors of WoC. Do you realize how wrong, how screwed up, and how profoundly anti-feminist that is?
i’ve had this discussion with so many “feminists” that i just find it tiresome.
brush it off as nonsense, if you like. it’s not nonsense to me.
and for the record, i don’t think anne is racist. i think some of her statements are borne of privilege, though.
at the end of the day, do you have any idea how insulting it is as a black person to hear a white person say “you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t black” or “you only achieved [insert whatever] because you’re black?” i mean, it’s just gut-wrenchingly insulting. people — friends — have said shit like that to me having no idea how insulting it is. does it make them bad people? no. just unaware of how it feels to hear those words. i still remember the names of those who have said that to me. i still remember exactly where i was when i heard those words.
it sucks, is what i’m saying. but you get used to it.
::shrug::
Anya
I agree with Anne Laurie about one point, that our infighting will ensure that power will remain in the hands of the white man. However, unity of the oppressed does not depend of the groups facing multiple oppressions to make the sacrifice. Instead it depends on white privileged women coming to terms with their privileges and acknowledging that they are also beneficiaries of the privilege of whiteness. Excusing racist comments as a product of bitterness, born out of years of being told to wait your turn, to give other minorities a leg up, is harmful and it’s no better than when conservatives talk about Affirmative Action.
Angry Black Lady
@slag: oh no. really? the old “you have to teach me otherwise i won’t learn” tactic?
i need to bone out of this thread.
Corner Stone
@Anya:
Thank goodness. I was getting worried there for a bit.
Corner Stone
@Yutsano:
I’d vote for her. I love broccoli.
There, I said it. Fuck the haterz.
Ija
@Angry Black Lady:
Yeah, the Google is available if this person really wants to know. But of course he/she doesn’t, it’s just a debating tactic to make my point seem full of shit and make him/her the person with the wisdom to say “we should all just get along”.
Newsflash: sometimes people really can’t just get along. It’s the silencing tactic of the majority to tell the minority with the issues to shut up for the good of the group. This applies to any group, liberals, feminist, whatever. The prerequisite for “getting along and not letting the enemy wins” is for the minority with the issues to STFU and pretend everything is just hunky dory in our corner of the universe.
hilts
@Anya:
This should end the argument, but of course someone else will rise up and try to defend Ferraro’s indefensible comments.
slag
@Ija:
I have to say…I was initially tempted to dismiss this comment out of hand.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my initial point was actually directed to white women, specifically. I’m tired of seeing this shit come from white women over and over again. White women are the ones regularly initiating the Oppression Olympic debates, and quite frankly, it’s getting damn tiresome. It reeks of entitlement and privilege. And has more to do with cultural iconography than any meaningful issues women are facing today.
So, just stop it. We understand where it comes from, but really, it’s time to let it go. And when you find yourself tempted to wonder who’s more oppressed–the white female or the black male–just reconcile yourself answering that it is the black female. Embrace that answer and don’t let it go.
Silver
Just ask Morris Wanchuk for his thoughts on Geraldine Ferraro as a person…
oondioline
It occurs to me that mature feminism allows feminists to make legitimate criticisms of women who behave badly without fear.
It also occurs to me that disallowing this is the sign of a misguided or immature feminism, or just another petty tribalism.
Ija
@gil mann:
And of course the racists who vote for Obama because they are a little too impressed with a black man speaking so well is a lot worse than the racists who would not vote for Obama because he is black. Because liberals are racists, too, and racist liberals are the worst of them all. This is not your point (I hope), but this is probably the takeaway for conservatives. Opps, forgot to mention black people who obviously only voted for Obama because he is black, not because most of them almost always vote for Democrats anyway. They are the biggest racist of them all. So in the scheme of thing, the racists who won’t vote for Obama because of the color of his skin is the least racist of them all.
slag
@Ija: Oh spare me. You’re the one that raised the all-important issues that black and white women have to disagree about. It shouldn’t be all that difficult for you to name a couple. What? Racial, gender, and identity equality? Bodily sovereignty? Equal pay? What? Because if your point is that the all-important issues that black and white women have to disagree about is that some white women are schmucks who aren’t keeping their eyes on the big picture, then just say that.
ariel
John, I totally agree!
Though I must object to your open hostility towards Allan. Is this an open forum or is it not?
Corner Stone
@ariel:
Lord High Hall Monitor deserves all he gets and more.
eemom
I’m STILL waiting for someone to tell me WTF Geraldine Ferraro did that was worthy of respect, other than serve as postergirl for a man who wanted to be president, just like, you know….her.
The more I think about it, the more it annoys me to hear her credited with being some kind of trailblazer. Trailblazing is active. Being used as a tool to fulfill someone else’s ambition is passive, particularly for a woman, in the worst kind of way.
slag
@Angry Black Lady: You’re right, ABL. We certainly can’t be expected to bring the debate down to specific issues so that it possibly moves in a more productive direction. I don’t know what came over me.
eemom
@ariel:
There is also something weird, disturbing, and fucked up about how both Cole and DougJ leaped into paternal protective “you leave her alone!” mode over this. Especially when they never do that for ABL, who has been subjected to a zillion times the assholery that AL ever has.
So fucked up and weird is it, especially when combined with all the other fucked up and disturbing undercurrents of this discussion, that I think I will not think about it anymore. Off to read more cheerful news about nuclear meltdowns and the Middle East.
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
That’s fine. She probably was just a tool of the patriarchy or however you want to describe it. A Democratic Clarence Thomas.
She certainly never did much after 1984. You could probably say that her UN stuff was the actual highlight of her abilities and career personally.
Sarah Loving
um, i have nothing to add. just that i love you, john cole.
Angry Black Lady
@slag: if i thought this thread had a shred of hope of moving in a more productive direction, maybe i’d engage.
having been in discussions like this literally hundreds of times, however, you’ll pardon me if i choose not to spend my evening in that manner, especially when you could easily research and read about these issues, and educate yourself.
slag
@Angry Black Lady:
Yeah. And I’m sure each one of those discussions was as intellectually honest and issue-oriented as this one was.
I love that asking people to be specific about the problems they vaguely allude to has turned into a debate tactic to be derided. You’re right that it is a debate tactic. But sometimes, it can be a useful one. Of course, it only works when people are actually interested in solving problems. Not so much when liberals just want to bitch about how we’ll never ever get along.
Back into your corners for the next round, everyone! And ignore the bell–just keep going until you knock each other out next time.
Kathryn
@Angry Black Lady: It is also true that women of color very often had to make the very harsh choice of promoting men of color over their own interests. White feminists of Ferraro’s generation were really angry with men in general, although this was white men. But the complexity of the issues for minority women itself conflicts with far more single-tracked white feminism because of the shitload of ‘isms they labor under. This was one of the main problems (say pre-1970); to promote women of color as part of white feminism but not deal with all the other ‘isms wasn’t possible. And minority women had a lot more to deal with than the male/female divide. So early feminism, in the context of the times, did damage because it was divisive on so many levels. And I think that is what Anne Laurie was trying to say — the approach of the times is what created a Geralding Ferraro, but its very nature (anger and limited) led to more division and failure — that has continued to overshadow creating a more equal and uplifting approach (and let’s include white men too).
So this is where, instead of bitching about the racism of white feminists (and reading AL superficially so you can toss out your standard rant), it would be more helpful to make a case (of specifics) for building an inclusive platform.
rikyrah
another poster wrote on Coates’ blog, about Barack Obama, that he needed every dime he raised for his campaign, because he just wasn’t running for President as a Democrat,but that it took every dime of that money to run against 350 years of the demonization of the Black man in America. So, no matter with all the bullshyt of ‘his mama is White, and his White grandparents raised him’, he still needed almost a billion dollars to overcome the 350 years of the demonization of the Black man.
Because, nobody will ever convince me, – EVER- that the campaign shouldn’t have been over by October 1st, once Caribou Barbie’s essence had been revealed, and the country was bitchslapped with the thought that a 72 year old man who wasn’t only a former POV, BUT who ALSO had SEVERAL bouts with CANCER, put, in position, a heartbeat away, a stupid idiot without a frigging clue.
Angry Black Lady
@Kathryn: No thanks. As slag already pointed out, it’s “nonsense.”
or, if you prefer:
[insert “standard” rant here]
Angry Black Lady
@eemom: I figured it was hazing. ;)
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Well put. You also post at Al G.’s place, don’t you?
Bob Loblaw
@rikyrah:
As I recall, it was.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html#polls
I think Obama’s race clearly cost him like a percent or two of the nationwide vote, but the race was over post-financial crisis.
There’s a reason that fall was largely dedicated to making fun of Palin, rather than any particular electoral tension.
WaterGirl
I don’t think the race was over by October at all. It should have been, for all the reasons rikyrah mentioned, but it wasn’t. No one could really predict what would happen on Nov 4, in the privacy of that voting booth. No matter what people admitted to publicly, no one could predict whether fear or racism would override logic and self-preservation when it came down to the wire for each person in the voting booth.
Kathryn
@Angry Black Lady: Understandable. [insert “standard” rant here] ….so many to choose from…
slag
@Angry Black Lady:
Actually, you’re right. Nonsense was the wrong word. Feelings aren’t nonsense. And I too often tend to dismiss them as such, which is my personal failing. Really. It’s a problem that I need to focus more energy on solving.
That said, I continue to maintain that on an issue level–and even on a priority level–women of color and white women have every reason to be on the same side today. And the only reason we aren’t sometimes is that we’re not actually looking at the issues and priorities of today but rather focusing on those of the past. And, to reiterated, I’m not talking about the people reacting negatively to the stupidity being expressed today. I’m talking about the people initiating the stupidity today by trying to justify the actions of yesterday.
And I stand by the parallel with teabaggers and union workers. The rancor may seem rational on an individual perspective level, but it quickly seems less and less rational when national issues come into focus.
All that said, does it matter when people say stupid shit, and should they be held accountable? Yes. But is this kind of discussion enforcing any accountability? I say no.
Bob Loblaw
@WaterGirl:
Except that’s not true. People predicted by actual polling that Obama would win substantially…and then he went and won substantially.
Americans didn’t lie. They didn’t wallow or live down to baser instincts. They didn’t fuck up. There was no Bradley effect. They were ready to vote for the best candidate and they did.
This TNC post was always my favorite from that whole ridiculous time:
http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2008/10/effete-liberals-bomaye/6152/
Ija
@eemom:
In a weird way, that’s actually pretty complimentary towards ABL, although they probably don’t mean it that way. They know ABL can take care of herself. No paternal protection necessary in her case.
ETA: Maybe it’s also related to the fact that the people being assholish towards ABL are usually guys, while the pushbacks AL are getting here are mostly from women. With the caveat that you don’t actually know if a commenter is a woman or men. Just what can be gleamed from the general remarks and tone.
Ija
@slag:
Yup, because of course it’s not about actual discrimination or real issues being neglected or anything, it’s just about colored women and their hurt fee fees. It’s all in our head (or is it heart?) y’all. It didn’t really happen and is certainly not still happening now. It’s just FEELINGS. Feelings aren’t nonsense (we are so grateful for that acknowledgement, BTW), but they are not so important either. Certainly not as important as our sisterhood against the evils of men.
slag
@Ija: Are you really this dumb or are you just trying to bait me? Seriously, I can’t decide anymore.
Ija
@slag:
I don’t know, which answer do you prefer? I guess I am dumb, so explain to me like you are explaining to a dumb person (opps, I guess “like” is not the right word, since we already established that I am dumb) what were you trying to say with that “feelings aren’t nonsense” crap? First you said that the black-white feminist divide is nonsense. Then when you are called out on it, you said that you were wrong and that “feelings aren’t nonsense”, which lead me to conclude that you believe that the divide is caused by feelings, not actual issues. So please explain to this big dumb broad why my conclusion is so dumb? Or, wait, you didn’t say mu arguments were dumb, you said I am dumb. So I guess I should ask why you think I am dumb to conclude what I concluded based on your words?
socratic_me
@Angry Black Lady: and for the record, i don’t think anne is racist. i think some of her statements are borne of privilege, though.
That made me think of the “what you did” not “what you are” conversation that I always try to spread across the internets.
Other than that, keep up the fight. I think AL’s later claims that Obama made lemonade because he was a gifted politician are a decent attempt to mitigate. But at the end of the day, she is still saying that he wouldn’t have been able to martial those skills as effectively if he couldn’t play off his race. Given the preponderance of moronic white males running things, this argument is clearly born of privilege-based-blindness (PBB).
aisce
@Ija:
or it could just be that they don’t like Allan much. at least in cole’s case. he’s a preachy little thing.
@slag:
stop. digging. i think if you take a breath and read over some of your posts, you’ll realize you’re making a mistake here.
as for the rest of the thread, obama’s race absolutely hurt him in politics once he got out of the friendly confines of the il statehouse. it hurt him when he tried to become a congressman, it hurt him when he won his senate seat, it hurt him in the primaries with hillary, it hurt him in the general election, and it hurts him now as prez. it makes him polarizing by default, even though if you strip race away, he should be the least polarizing MAN we’ve elected in forever.
did being black help get a good start off the blocks in politics? yeah, probably. it gave him a certain distinctiveness. just like bobby jindal or marco rubio or whoever. but that base appeal isn’t a practical edge to winning office. looking fresh and exciting at first glance doesn’t stop you from looking terrifying to the racists and the bigots at the second or third. or fourth or fifth. it’s a life and career of neverending bullshit, and you just have to take it silently and stoically and hope you can make a difference in the end.
Pat
I WAS a young woman in Geraldine’s heyday, and she didn’t “impress me much” as a Democrat or a feminist either.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Here. Just for your edification. Who benefits most from affirmative action? White women.
And another.
Continued in next post.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Those were just two quick hits from the Google machine.
I am offended by the ‘baggers comparison because they have no valid concerns, and in fact, many of them get the kind of assistance they decry. You acknowledge that there are valid concerns here (kinda), but then say it’s not important in the national sense. And, you are telling the people who actual suffer the discrimination to just shrug that aside.
The life expectancy of white women is 4 years longer than that of black women. Black women have a median income of 93% of white women.
Again, two quick Google hits. The problems aren’t all about feelings or whatever. There are, you know, like actual discrimination against black women (and other women of color) that completely differ from the discrimination against women in general.
Until white women acknowledge the very real gap between women of color and women–there ain’t much more to be said here.
P.S. I am a multi-tasker. I can fight ‘the man’ and patriarchy in general AND fight other isms at the same time.
gil mann
@Ija:
Of course! No, wait, I mean it’s the opposite of what you said, in that dopes with unexamined prejudices who don’t harbor any particular malice are “better” than white supremacists (in a vacuum–I’d argue they do more damage to minority interests in the long run, just not in one measurable action in 2008).
That’s not the point I was trying to m…
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Wait, you’re saying conservatives are prone to interpret things in a way that reinforces their worldview even if they have to sacrifice intellectual honesty to do so? Gee, I’d better factor that into my argument then.
I was explicitly referring to members of minority groups who hadn’t previously voted, but feel free to ignore that so you can make it sound like I’m being patronizing and not just pointing out that a whole lot of Americans need a spark of inspiration to get to the polls.
Again, more like the opposite of that, but I’m talking about electoral math, not value assignation. I and plural noun-forms can’t help but think you’re not giving us a fair shake.
@slag:
Oh, he does that constantly, it’s like a thing with him.
Anya
@Ija:
I don’t think it’s complimentary to ABL, at all. I think it’s out of instinct to overreact when we think someone we really like is being challenged on something relating to racism. Allan expressed his dismay over Anne Laurie’s very problematic statement (which she’s yet to address) and Cole, and to a lesser extend my boyfriend DougJ, leapt to her defense.
As TNC says:
Ija
@Anya:
Like someone else mentioned upthread, it could just be related to the fact that Cole really hates Allan and takes pleasure in demeaning him. So since Allan is the first person to complain about AL in this thread, the paternalistic “leave-her-alone” might be more about Allan than about AL.
WaterGirl
@Ija: As I was falling asleep last night I had the thought that John Cole had written a “lay off ABL” post just last week after ABL put up a post, then took it down, then put it back up with comments disabled and folks could only comment at ABL’s site.
John Cole
I guess we will do an all in one post.
@Anya:
Since when is it “bullying” to tell someone to knock off the nonsense? There is a definite pattern of behavior here that I want stopped. Allan has decided that he knows what is and is not out of bounds, and then repeatedly attempts to try to control the debate.
@Allan:
Anya- this is the kind of crap I am talking about. Allan the martyr, always picked upon, alone up there on that cross, wailing about the poor treatment he receives. All these nasty bullies. Oh so mean!
Seriously, it was “brave” to disagree with me? People do it every single day, and no one gets shot.
@Anya:
There are lots of people on this thread who voiced their feelings and who disagreed with Anne Laurie. None of them, however, were doing what Allan was doing (and does on every thread), which is attempting to hijack what is and what is not out of bounds for debate. Again, read what he wrote:
and
Those aren’t feelings. Those don’t add anything to the debate. He’s simply trying to overstate and distort what AL said in an attempt to convince people that what she said was SO OUT OF BOUNDS THAT I JUST HAVE THE VAPORS. LORDY!
On top of it, as I pointed out, AL was in no way defending Ferraro, so the “determined to out-Ferraro Ferraro” was extra nasty. On top of it all, he does this a good bit of the time. Go look at the threads from last week-end when Allan had a bunch of time on his hands.
Finally, I would like to note that all of this is even more interesting when you realize that just last night, Al had to issue a warning to Allan for his comments that were in violation of the comment policy. The very next day, he is just shocked, shocked to the point of fainting, what AL has said, and attempts to ostracize her and create a groundswell against her. Interesting, no?
@eemom:
And wherever Allan goes, eemom follows, tut-tutting all the way. Mind you, some of the ugliest comments ever made on this blog were by eemom having a fit, but she’s blind to that. Here we see her passive-aggressive nonsense in full light- I might be sexist because I rush to the defense of helpless wimmen, or I might be racist because I defend AL but not ABL. It’s weird! It’s disturbing! It’s fucked up!
How about this- blow it out your ass. I defend every one of my front pagers. I defended ED Kain when you all were murdering him, I defended Michael Demmons when he was having a rough go of it, I defended DougJ over the Juan Williams flap, and lo and behold, what is this:
Why I do believe that would be me, defending ABL, just four days ago. And what’s this:
Why, that would be EEMOM, thanking me for… defending ABL.
Four days ago.
John Cole
@Ija:
No, it is because Allan is attempting to make a little clique of insiders who act as hall monitors in the comments thread. It’s irritating.
lethargytartare
@Bob Loblaw:
yeah, because white guys who go to Ivy League schools never get to run for president.
seriously, WTF?
slag
@asiangrrlMN: The funny thing to me here, asiangrrlMN, is that in that analogy, the teabaggers were the white women starting these unproductive arguments.
But in respect to your point regarding specific issues over which white women and women of color are at cross-purposes, I’m not really seeing how affirmative action fits in. Is the suggestion that WOC should pull support from affirmative action while white women continue it? Affirmative action is a complex subject, but I don’t think we’ve gotten that far yet. If you think we have, that’d be a conversation worth having, I think.
And this:
is the point I think we may disagree on the most. I don’t think those issues “completely differ” from discrimination against women, in general. I think they are a compound of issues that it very much benefits white women and WOC to be on the same side fighting. And are on the same side fighting, in many cases. So, no, I stand by the assertion that, on the major issues of today, there are very few–if any–that white women and WOC shouldn’t be in complete agreement on.
And yes, we can all fight the patriarchy and the other isms at the same time. But in conversations such as these, it’s probably more useful to be as specific as we can about the real issues we’re fighting over rather than whatever it is we’ve been doing until now. Otherwise, the discussion devolves into everyone going away seeming to have deep, irreconcilable differences, thereby perpetuating the same problems over and over and over…
In the end, I guess I tend to assess my priorities–and enemies list, for that matter–by taking stock of the composition of the legislative branch of the US government. How many of them are white women? How many of them are WOC? And after all is said and done, it’s hard for me to embrace the notion that someone like Nancy Pelosi is very much responsible for keeping women of color down. But that conclusion is separate and distinct from the conclusion I tend to draw daily, which is that much of our society–women and men–is comprised of racist, sexist assholes. And from where I sit, that’s an important distinction to make if we ever want to make any progress toward an era in which we can reasonably blame Nancy Pelosi for keeping WOC down. Weirdly enough, I would see that as a sign of progress.
Just Some Fuckhead
Geez, could eemom be a more hideous person?
Comrade DougJ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What is the point of a ridiculous comment like that? Come on.
Bob Loblaw
@lethargytartare:
From Chicago? Without owing any odious favors to the machine?
Obama went from nobody to completely owning that city in ten years, and he did it completely clean and compromise-free. He’s amazing. But yeah, given that city’s internal politics, it was an asset being black in making that happen. There are lanes and roles in politics in this country whether you want to admit it or not.
A black woman can be mayor of Atlanta, but probably not senator from georgia. Not yet. No matter how talented or competent she is. Thanks to people like Obama leading the way, her odds just went up a little though.
But I wasn’t just talking about race by itself. It’s race merged with locality and history of political tradition. It all matters. And it changes how political careers are shaped and formed.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade DougJ:
Did you read John Cole’s comment? eemom thought it was the greatest thing when John came to ABL’s defense. When he comes to AL’s defense, it’s proof of his sexism.
eemom
@John Cole:
point taken re your previous defense of ABL — with the caveat that you never intervened on any of the zillion previous instances where assholes ganged up on her in the comments.
As for your defense of E.D., that’s always been more along the lines of your standard pissy little “it’s my blog, and you all suck” attitude towards us great unwashed.
Finally, your comments about me personally are excessive and assholish, as they always are on those rare occasions when you deign to address anything I’ve said. Retract the love. Fuck you, asshole.
Comrade DougJ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
“Hideous” is too strong a word for things people do in blog comments.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Stop it. Everyone stop trying to rile everyone up.
And I say these things to eemom and Allan because they have shown they are quite capable of giving back. That’s what so preposterous about this “out of line, Anne Laurie” stuff.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Sure I could. I could be YOU.
shortstop
My hyacinth is blooming. It smells pretty.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade DougJ:
Can you forward me over a list of DougJ-approved adjectives?
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: I’m not trying to rile anyone up. I’m simply noting what you pointed out. If you take a look through the first 300 comments of this thread, you will see the usual suspects did their usual number here, sans Fuckhead.
eemom
There is one more point here worthy of note, and come to think of it, it’s probably why I reacted the way I did to Cole’s “knight in shining armor” appearance of behalf of AL in this thread.
It’s the vacuum that it filled. There has never been a thread where ABL was attacked, where she didn’t RESPOND to the substance — to the extent there was any substance — of the attacks.
On this thread, some deeply disturbing issues were raised by the things AL said — and HELLO, Cole-Asshole, Allan and I were very far from the only ones to point them out.
She didn’t respond to those at ALL — except, as noted in my post way above, to semi-retract and then try to deflect the whole thing into a “with us or agin us” moment.
Karen
It would be irresponsible not to add that while there were lots of people who voted for McCain because they saw Obama’s race before they saw his character and decency, there were those few who didn’t vote for Obama. They voted against Sarah Palin.
Also the economy had just crashed and McCain had reacted badly when Obama kept his cool and that made a few people consider Obama when they normally wouldn’t have.
Obama was the right man at the right time. As a President who was tossed in a pool of shit and piranhas; made to swim as sharks are cicrcling he’s had to adjust his sights based on the situations at the time.
Even Bill Clinton didn’t have that against him.
We needed a pragmatist and we got one.
Angry Black Lady
@socratic_me: wow, what a fantastic clip. have never seen that one before. am adding it to my arsenal.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’s because those posts were not 100% proof name-calling and ad hominem/wominem, but mostly people sharing actual thoughts about the topics under discussion.
Which, as we all know, Fuckhead just doesn’t do.
Angry Black Lady
yes, because my concerns can be boiled down to “Bitching about the racism of white feminists” and it’s because i’m reading AL superficially so i can toss out my “standard” rant” and that i should be more helpful (to whom, i don’t know) in my arguments, concerns, feelings so that i can build an inclusive platform.
after that sort of condescension, you can hardly wonder why i have no interest in engaging with you, right? you snarkily imply that i don’t have any real concerns or feelings on the subject and simply take the opportunity to rant about white feminists as i usually do, as implied by the use of the term “standard” and then the further snark bout how many “standard” rants i have to choose from because all i care about is identity politics, right? and i don’t really care about them, i’m just ranting.
what a crock of shit.
you’re not interested in what i have to say. you’re simply interested in me proving that i really don’t have anything to say, i just want to bitch.
again, what a crock of shit.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom: Yes, every coupla threads there is a total meltdown and you are always right in the middle of it.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Once again, Aptly Named One, your eminently cool detachment from the thread meltdowns is the result of the fact that you never contribute anything of substance to the discussion, and you sure as shit don’t care about any of the issues that occasionally get people upset.
The sole purpose of your existence on this blog is to vent your pathological hatred of humanity and vacuousness of intellect on strangers in cyberspace.
Anya
@John Cole: Okay, so I am not very familiar with your history with Allan, still I don’t think what he said was so out of bounds. To tell you the truth, I felt the same way, but I am tapping into the reservoir of affection I have for AL, for me not to react the same way. I don’t want to re-litigate the whole thing over again, but the whole, she was in artful but justified because of those minorities bit, is offensive, and it’s yet to be addressed by AL. So, maybe Allan reacted the way he did, because he was genuinely troubled by AL’s statement, or because he has an axe to grind, I don’t know, I am not a mind reader. What I know though is, your comment to him was an overreaction and it was meant to do the maximum humiliation.
Cole, you should realize that issues of racism, and social identities are loaded and sometimes, people will react from a place of emotions, so you should allow that.
Anyway, this whole thing is too traumatic for me, to tell you the truth. I feel like I am back to 2008 and I am having the same argument with my grandmother.
Bob
One of your best posts. Clean, sharp, taking down what and who needed to be taken down. Truth, I kind of found Herbert a bit predictable myself – unfortunately, a position like that at the Times needs a flamethrower that will get people more than a half-inch off their self-indulgent asses.
Angry Black Lady
i’m sure you didn’t mean to imply that issues affecting WOC that do not affect white women are minor issues and simply because you are not aware of them (whether you have not made an effort to research — there is a world of feminist critique at your fingertips — or because you have ignored WOC in the past who have attempted to explain them). asiangrrl asserted that there are issues and you just swat them away — no there aren’t! i disagree!
and this:
i went to one of the most liberal colleges in the country. so yes, my hundreds of conversation have been focused, intellectually honest and issue-oriented, and each one turns out the same way, which is why i don’t have conversations with people who demand that i explain what my issues are “with specifics.” (it’s always “with specifics,” the implication being that it is incumbent upon me to explain again and again and again what my issues are, and if i can’t come up with an approved list of grievances, then i really am just spouting off… just spouting a “standard” rant, as kathryn would call it.)
your comment is steeped in condescension and privilege, whether or not it was intended that way.
i appreciate that you acknowledged that the nonsense term wasn’t helpful, but these conversations have not proven to be worth my time and effort when i’ve had them with people face to face. having a conversation on the internet rarely leads to anything positive. and given this particular forum and the efforts to bait me and the personal attacks lobbed against me on a nearly daily basis here, it is not constructive for me to have that discussion in this space.
Yutsano
@Angry Black Lady: I cannot believe you weren’t already aware of the awesomeness that is Jay Smooth. I would seriously have his bebehs. After you were done with him methinks. ;)
And not for nothing, but it was AL who enlightened me to his existence a few months back. Just food for thought.
Corner Stone
Cole, you have a blog within a blog. The clique demarcation is obvious.
Allan et al are only filling the vacuum you have allowed to exist.
Angry Black Lady
@Yutsano: that’s cool.
i have adopted that tactic just from life experience. it’s one thing to “you’re being a jerk” and quite another to say “you are a jerk.”
that’s why i try to choose my words carefully, especially when it comes to race because the discussion immediately gets everyone’s hackles up.
is hackle even the word i’m looking for?
i don’t know. i fell asleep on the couch and woke up to the ring — that weird chick crawling out of the tv. not the best start to my day! i’m a little discombobulated. :)
salacious crumb
Id love to have Amanda Marcotte right a sentence or two on this blog. We’d be flinging major poo at each other in no time!
Yutsano
@Angry Black Lady: I’m just waiting for the stage where we blame everything on hip-hop. Then things will get REALLY epic.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Did I ever fucking say Nancy Pelosi was the one holding women of color down? I did not. I love Nancy SMASH, and I would HAPPILY vote for her if she were running for president. My beef is with women like YOU and AL and Geraldine Ferarro who insist that our aims are all the same–as long as they are your aims. It’s nice of you to be all concerned about WOC is the abstract, but when it comes down to it, affirmative action and all that shit benefits white women the most. Four years of added life for white women not a big deal? The fact that black women make less than white women do on average is not a big deal? Then, hell, the fact that women on average make less than white men is not a big deal, amirite?
I know none of this is going to make a difference as you cling to your “I am one with all women as long as they don’t push a different agenda like oh, I don’t know, racism being as problematic if not more so than sexism” mantle and nothing I say will make a difference.
However. In case someone else maybe is open-minded enough to catch a clue, here are two links from my favorite white guy, sociology division, Tim Wise.
You know, you and AL and Kathryn are so quick to see sexism and point it out where need be. Why not the same kind of attack on racism?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Hi, hon. Very sweet of you to try to diffuse. I don’t think it’s gonna work, though.
Corner Stone
@asiangrrlMN: This sounds like it should be a front page post.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I’m just being honest. AL turned me on to Jay Smooth awhile back (no pun intended, though I know you’ll see it there anyway :) and now ABL has been happily infected. Other than that point I’m not wading into these waters much deeper. Except to point out that if a lot of folks are getting this het up over racism vs. sexism, maybe introspection on all sides is warranted.
Allan
* deep sigh *
I had hoped that with the dawning of another day, everyone would move on and let this clusterfuck of a thread inch off the front page and into oblivion.
Cole, I took your excellent advice last night to heart, and stopped wasting time arguing with your commenters and FPers, and went back to work on my own writing. New post up at ABL!
But since you managed to throw virtually every derailing tactic of Privileged Persons into your fresh new rant, I guess I’ll put the other project I’m working on aside for a few minutes to respond.
Yes, I have a history with you. Yes, I have a history with AL. And my feelings are my feelings, no matter how hard you try to simultaneously deny that I actually feel them and you mock me for feeling them.
Since you bring it up, I was issued a warning by AL for homophobia. I like the way you share that with your readers here to suggest that I had done something truly horrible, with the construction “AL had to issue a warning to Allan for his comments that were in violation of the comment policy.”
AL had to issue a warning. She didn’t choose to, she had to. Why, it was completely out of her control. The rules demanded it.
Never mind that the rules also state that comments that are so offensive as to merit a warning will also be deleted, and yet my crime against humanity is still extant on this site as of today.
I am about to copy and paste the offending comment into this thread, so some of you may wish to avert your eyes. Who knows? By reposting it, AL may be forced to implement the stage two rule and ban me from the site for a week.
**TRIGGER WARNING**
It happened in this exchange on the “Syria” thread, where eemom responded to CS:
296.eemom – March 25, 2011 | 11:15 pm · Link
@Corner Stone:
know what’s pathetic, Stoned Alone? You. Lingering at the bottom of dead threads to lob your serial schoolboy taunts at people who have forgotten you exist.
What you need are some more imaginary Nicks to catch sock-puppet-handed. G’wan, go sniff out some clues on some other ancient threads—it’ll at least theoretically lend some purpose to your existence other than hating on strangers.
So I replied to eemom to point out that CS and his obsession with documenting the existence of sockpuppets at BJ could just be a smokescreen, that he and his compadres could be someone else’s sockpuppet. Someone who has been accused of sockpuppetry himself in the past…
317.Allan – March 26, 2011 | 1:19 am · Link
@eemom: What makes you think Corner Stone and Just Some Fuckhead aren’t Glenn Greenwald and his boyfriend?
Being unable to live together in the US makes a gay couple bitter. Try to show a bit more empathy for them and their permanent butt-hurt.
It had a link to a famous Ace of Spades series of posts from a few years ago that built the case that Greenwald or someone close to him had been sockpuppeting support for him on his posts. And you’ll note that the larger objective of my comment was to tweak CS about sockpuppetry.
Now, one person in that thread objected to my comment as gay-hating, and that person himself was recently banned for a week from this site by my friend ABL, and that couldn’t have had anything to do with the offense he took at my comment, now could it? But I will grant Tim, Interrupted that my comment could be read as having an anti-gay component to it. After all, even though he may have ulterior motives for expressing his opinions, that doesn’t make his opinions invalid, now does it?
But my comment was poorly stated and it confused some other readers who didn’t know the backstory of Greenwald’s life situation. When I saw them veering off target and piling on Greenwald, I stepped in to clarify myself and explain/defend Greenwald on this issue thusly:
342.Allan – March 26, 2011 | 2:52 pm · Link
@soonergrunt: Sorry if that comment was unclear. In Glenn’s specific case, the reality is that they are a bi-national couple. His partner is Brazilian, and so, like many others, it has not been possible for them to make the US their permanent home due to the interface between DOMA and immigration policies.
The name we in the LGBT community use for people like Glenn is “love exile”. Glad to clear that up for you.
And to eemom:
343.Allan – March 26, 2011 | 3:27 pm · Link
@eemom: And I’m part of such a couple, holding a valid California marriage license issued on June 17, 2008, the first day of the brief window in which such licenses were legally permitted. And even without marriage, registered domestic partnerships here are treated the same as married couples for taxation purposes, so we file our state income taxes jointly.
See my response to soonergrunt above for why Glenn’s situation is unlike mine. We have other friends who are caught in the exact same bind as Glenn and his partner. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and it should be corrected.
But in spite of my efforts to refocus that my issue was with CS, and not with Glenn per se, and to defend Glenn against any unwarranted negativity directed at him, AL “had to” issue me a warning. For homophobia.
And John, how did I respond to the email that AL sent me and cc’ed you on with my warning?
“Thanks for the feedback. Have a great weekend!”
Wow, I hope the whining in that email wasn’t too much for your delicate feelings to bear.
So there you have the rest of the story, for those of you who wish to continue thrashing about in the mud.
Meanwhile, as several commenters have observed, AL has never actually owned up to dropping the turd in this punchbowl that motivated my response of revulsion. The one that John insists can’t be my actual feelings, that my disapproval of what she said is a smokescreen, that I have ulterior motives, and that my real goal is to replace him and AL as the Privileged Person so that I can oppress them in turn.
See ya later!
General Stuck
Jeebus. Looks like I picked the right month to retire. And to start sniffing glue.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh God, I can’t believe I have to relive that awful episode of homophobia from Allan. Why can’t you monsters just let us gay people alone?
Sharl
@asiangrrlMN: Yeah, I think I’ll sign on with CS @343. Superb links, agMN! That second one especially will separate those who are genuinely sincere in wanting to understand the problem of the divides among Anglo and WOC feminists, from those who take a look, respond with tl;dr* and happily carry on with their comfy (if incorrect) views.
*agMN’s second link again; it IS a long read. Hopefully that fact, and the fact that it came out in 1998 – it still applies, thirteen years later – won’t be too off-putting to people with honorable intentions and good will in acquiring a better understanding of this big issue.
D-Chance.
So Cole decides to stomp on a still-warm corpse because… she preferred Hillary to Obama. Stay classy, Cole.
Corner Stone
Cole, this isn’t going anywhere until you face up to what you’ve allowed.
John Cole
@Allan:
That’s where I stopped reading, FYI. You’re like a spoof of liberals you would see on Red Eye or some other right-wing show that hates liberals and wants to portray them as negatively as possible.
Bob Loblaw
Personally, I think this blog could use even more cliquey, insular, disassociated mini-blogs floating around. Make it a whole multiverse kinda deal.
An iron law of the internets: message board power makes people lose their fucking minds. Oh moderators, never ever change.
WaterGirl
@General Stuck: We have come full circle, back to Airplane, in just one week!
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: Wow. That first article is amazing. Just so good.
The second link was good, lots of really good information, but it left me feeling discouraged.
The first one, though, called “bullshit” in such a clear way that I could never articulate, but always felt. Thanks so much for sharing the article.
Anya
@John Cole: Did you think the comment was homophobic? If so, I would say that qualifies you as an oversensitive liberal.
@Bob Loblaw: What cliques? Can someone enlighten me. I want to make sure that I join the appropriate group.
John Cole
@Anya: I allow my front pagers to make these decisions for themselves.
If I had my way, we wouldn’t even be dealing with this kind of crap. People could say things, and if they are offensive or obnoxious, people would just ignore them or insult them back. But apparently that is too much, so now we have to police things. I refuse to spend all day doing it myself, so if one of my front pagers decides something is out of line, I will let them deal with it.
In the past we didn’t have to do this kind of thing, because we only had a few trolls like Darrell who would say things so offensive that everyone would stop and gasp. Now, though, we seem to have devolved into a message board where our number one priority is to see who can out-sensitive the next person. Someone says something remotely negative about Obama, and 20 people come out to make large displays of heading to their fainting couch. Someone says something remotely positive about Obama, and Joe Beese and the other side come out of the woodwork to make sure no one has a positive thought about any Democrat anywhere. Someone says something about gay rights, and there are twenty people there to tell you that you just don’t understand and their oppression is worse than the oppression anyone else has ever suffered. Mention women’s rights and feminism, and then you get threads like today.
This whole comment section has become toxic with aggrieved cliques, no sense of humor, and on the sidelines you have cornerstone and just some fuckhead throwing shit at the whole lot of you.
Just Some Fuckhead
I don’t know why you gotta keep picking on me, John. Is it because I’m gay? Because that shit is getting old quick.
Sharl
BTW, @John Cole, speaking as just one anonymous commenter cloaked by a bunch of pixels, I appreciate your site and the open commenting you allow here. Having had a gun pressed into my forehead on a couple of occasions in parking lot robberies, I personally have a different threshold for what constitutes threats and bullying – shoutyangry pixels aimed in my direction don’t exceed the threshold, though others with similar history may find such to be “triggering events” and respond differently; as always, YMMV. At a certain point, you gotta step in, I’m sure. But taking on folks in the comments seems the best way to do things – the best solution to “improperly exercised free speech” (again, YMMV) is more free speech – or something like that.
So keep on keepin’ on, and take care of yourself.
Corner Stone
@Sharl:
I’ve had a gun in my face twice also, and told it was my time.
Really disenjoyable.
Corner Stone
@John Cole: Why are you lumping me in with Fuckhead? He’s gay.
Corner Stone
@Anya:
Allan has already recruited you, and you’re not bright enough to figure it out.
Anya
@John Cole: I would go with the less policing, too. We’re all adults and anyone who’s so bothered by an anonymous commenter that it compels them to run to the FPer and complain, has no business being a commenter in a blog. Unless something is so out of bounds and clearly racist, sexist, homophobic or something that REASONABLE people agree is offensive.
For the record, Allen’s comment about GG, was mean spirited, in my opinion, but not homophobic. He was mocking his situation, which was insensitive. Now I am going in search of smelling salts, since that offends my sensibilities.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Thank you for being brave and saying that. It meant a lot to me. Have you been working out?
Yutsano
@Corner Stone: You fergot the “not that there’s anything wrong with that”. There are still protocols here you know.
Anya
@Corner Stone: I don’t consider agreeing with someone on ONE TOPIC as being equal to belonging to a clique. So are you the head of the clique for assholes?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
I don’t think it counts if it’s yer ex-wife.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: IIRC one of the original concerns/complaints voiced by Allan was about stalker-ish behavior in the comments, with one commenter constantly haranguing ED Kain and another constantly haranguing Angry Black Lady. It was creepy. That’s a very different point to raise than “people are being mean TO ME.” But then there was a dogpile on Allan for being too prim and proper and politically correct, which–unless there’s something I missed–wasn’t Allan’s point. And that dogpile has continued, and has included frontpagers as well as some of us rabble. I think there’s been a lot of misunderstanding of what the original issue was. Maybe I’m still misunderstanding it. But there’s more than a handful of people here who I want to tell, look, You’re Not Helping.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya:
I think that’s what political scientists would call an acephalous movement.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
As usual, there is something you missed. Allan isn’t about correcting an injustice. He’s about enforcing a viewpoint and his worldview/clique.
Tim didn’t stalk ABL, nor did he creep anything. She entrapped him with some bullshit then used his answer to wreck his shit.
Now, M_C and EDK? That was interesting, although I have to admit in the larger view she had him nailed.
Corner Stone
@Anya: Allan is using you. Own up to it or accept it.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I will stand with you, my gay brother!
I mean, if I could stand, of course. On the days I can get out of this wheelchair I am a raging badass.
Corner Stone
@Yutsano: Isn’t there? I mean, isn’t there?
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Ha! One time I was at the wrong party. The other time I was leaving a pool hall with a friend of mine and we got got.
My ex-wife quit on me and our son. That’s as simple an explanation as it gets.
Anya
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t have a lot of background about any of these discussions because I haven’t read BJ in a while. But to tell you the truth, some of the accusations about cliques forming at BJ and such, is puzzling to me. As long as I remember BJ had fiery arguments and flamewars, so what changed?
Corner Stone
@Yutsano: This New Era of Civility is hard.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: You’re right, the last thing a blog comment section needs is a small group of people who tend to pop up at the same time and pat each other on the back.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I totally agree. Oh…wait.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: You can’t deny what’s happened recently, can you?
John Cole
@FlipYrWhig: And ABL and ED Kain both have the ability and right to take care of those sorts of issues. In the case of M_C, she was given a week off and then a chance to come back. The very same day she was allowed back (or maybe it was the next), she started in with her spamming of threads again, and the final straw was her using the reply function to… reply to her own comments.
I honestly didn’t expect there to be problems with people stalking ABL. ED Kain I sort of expected, but ABL? First, she has shown that she can MORE than take care of herself. I’ve watched her rip people to shreds, which is one of the reasons I asked her to come aboard. Second, she doesn’t say anything that controversial, as far as I am concerned. The post the other day that the creeps ripped into overnight while I was sleeping, about the history of the League and all that, just wasn’t that controversial. Apparently there were some factual errors, but certainly nothing wild and crazy. Yet apparently the Obama can do no right crowd couldn’t take it.
Karen
@D-Chance.:
D-Chance, are you really such a moron or only playing dumb? Do you really think that the “still-warm corpse” would be getting all this vitriol if it was just about Ferraro preferring Hilary to Obama? How about WHY? How about her whole “Hilary is a poor white woman who is having her crown stolen by an uppity Affirmative Action candidate” subtext?
In Ferraro’s world and yours, the only reason why any black person gets ahead is because they’re using the race card as a white guilt sympathy card. She didn’t use exact words so don’t go demanding the link. She DID say that Obama’s race is the only reason he was winning and if he was a white man he wouldn’t even be a candidate.
But what her tirade was really about is that Hilary had already crowned herself and was counting on the whole Democratic party to fall in line. She made the mistake of not taking Obama as a serious candidiate so she didn’t put in the effort at Iowa. Then she’d already said she’d not participate in the Michigan primary as did Obama, suddenly she changed the rules when Obama started winning in primaries. And of course, she’d been counting on the black vote but when it was revealed that Obama actually COULD win, a good amount of the black vote went to Obama and that pissed Ferraro off. Apparently it’s fine when black people voted for Hilary but when it’s Obama, it’s a racial issue. Spare me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anya:
Too many chiefs creates a situation where everyone is jockeying for power, or sucking up to it. John needs to take back the banhammer and hide it inside the molten mountain again.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: There might be more polarization lately. The discussion about Libya was like a rehash of the discussion of the health care bill and the tax/budget deal. But my own involvement doesn’t date back as far as a lot of the true regulars, so I defer to them on the subject of whether there has been more cliquishness than there used to be.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig:
Sure, bring Nicks into this.
John Cole
@Karen:
Yes.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I’m not sure “what’s happened recently” apart from Allan raising concerns about bullying behavior–which I still don’t think were intended as “mommy, people are bullying me!” but rather “I think it’s getting too nasty out there.” But John is the one who read the actual personal communications from him, so I can only trust his judgment.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
So you’re not really sure what it is that Allan is doing here?
.
His “bullying” comments are with a purpose, and it has nothing to do with blog comments. Have you read a fucking thing he’s written?
Just Some Fuckhead
VCU knocks off Kansas!
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: At a certain point certain commenters’ comments all blend together for me.
Anya
@Corner Stone: Hey asshole, I’ve always liked Allen’s comments from Rumproast, so stop with the diskishness. I’ve never belonged to a clique, even in high school. And I am not about to start in the comment sections of a freaking blog.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Hmmm. I akshully pay attention.
Oh noes! Ceiling cat haz me naow!
Corner Stone
@Anya: How bout you catch a snap?
eemom
@John Cole:
I would say that is a gross oversimplification, except for the last part which quite correctly states the simple truth about a pair of simple assholes.
In any event, you don’t help matters much by being a pissy little tyrant one moment and a deliberate provacateur the next.
ETA: and I love the way you let Stoned lead you around by the nose, re “cliques.” Hilarious.
slag
@asiangrrlMN:
I didn’t mean to imply that those issues aren’t a big deal. I meant to imply that I think we are all pretty much on the same side on those issues. But if your implication is that white women–on the aggregate–don’t prioritize those issues appropriately because of racist undercurrents, then I might buy that and maybe even rescind the point in my comment pertaining to priorities. In the times I’ve thought about that point, specifically, it’s quite possible that my idealism may indeed have been getting the better of me.
I’m going to disregard the points of your argument that impugn my motives and self-identity–not because I don’t think they are a big deal–but because, unsurprisingly, I’ve had these pointless conversations many times and don’t find them worth having anymore. At least not in the manner in which we apparently insist on having them.
Which brings me to the final point I intend to make in this whole discussion:
I can’t suscribe to the “racism being as problematic if not more so than sexism” agenda for the sole reason that it’s not exactly an agenda. And if we can’t turn it into an agenda, then it just becomes more fodder for the kinds of discussions I had assumed many of us had grown pretty tired of. Or at least, we all say we’re tired of them. Including me. And yet I try. We all try. Why? What a weird and irrational way to spend our time and energy!
All that said, I do love me some Tim Wise.
WaterGirl
@FlipYrWhig: I completely agree with you about how the whole Allan thing got started the day john posted about people emailing him and Allan stated on the blog that he was one of the people who had emailed John.
As it seems with everything else in life, though, it’s what you do with what happens to you. The way Allan responded, and has continued to respond for the past week, has created a new problem all its own. As much as i originally viewed the situation as you do, it seems to have become an Allan drama that is playing itself out on the blog. I wish Allan the best, but if he’s not going to step back from the situation, i plan to skip his comments for awhile and hope that time will resolve everything.
Corner Stone
@eemom:
And as usual, you’re too fucking stupid to realize Cole used the term “cliques” before I did.
eemom
@rikyrah:
I’m sure you have better sense than to still be on this thread, but I just wanted to repost your comment here because it’s actually the truest damn thing that was said in this whole toxic mess.
IMO you are absolutely right that the election wouldn’t have been anywhere near as close as it was if Obama were a white man — and that with all the blusterous bullshit that was McCain, and the screaming obviousness that Obama was the better candidate, McCain very likely would still have pulled it off if it hadn’t been for (a) the economy tanking, and (b) his choice of Palin.
So, so much for Obama’s tweaking his blackness for political advantage, or however the hell she said it above.
WaterGirl
@slag:
Slag, I am beginning to wonder if you might not be able to write the same note as the one posted above. :-)
eemom
@Corner Stone:
I love the way you let Cole lead you around by the nose, re “cliques.” Hilarious.
Feel better now?
Corner Stone
@eemom: Yes. Thank you.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone:
Okay, I’ll bite. What do you see as Allan’s purpose?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@John Cole: tch tch. Now what did I say about LYING? I said this.
okthen.
A lot of people reply to their own comments, to refine something they said or got wrong. That is all I was doing.
I commented about EDK on relevent threads. DougJ’s master race thread, the one AL made especially for me, and EDK’s own thread. Anne Laurie was sna ke po king. She got exactly what she ax for.
Oh relly? But you banned me because I upset your commentariat and i said “appalling things”. Which is it? I have the mails, membah.
So why didn’t EDK take care of it?
He wanted to ban me, he said so. Why did you do it?
I think you understand me just fine.
You just don’t like what I say.
So you can ban me again, but be honest about it.
You dont like what I say.
slag
@WaterGirl: Yeah. I might think so. But that point about shifting priorities is actually a salient one for me. And in spite of everyone’s contributions, I’m serious about possibly refining my thinking on it some more. Although it’s such a complicated issue that I’m not ready to concede the point at this moment. Priorities shift pretty much daily in this world and it’s hard to say where they come from exactly.
For instance, it still baffles me that we’re currently prioritizing the deficit above all else in this country. I could easily attribute it to basic class warfare, but that wouldn’t explain why the White House is giving it such a high priority. Unless I assume that the Obama Administration has a thing against unemployed working class people. But that’s hardly a productive assumption for me to make, for obvious reasons.
So, I don’t know. I’m honestly going to have to think about the origins of priorities further. And that alone gets me something out of this discussion, right? Right?
Just Some Fuckhead
This clusterfuck will be complete if four of Nick’s sockpuppets show up to put a good word in for him.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: Allan is driving a narrative, and using it to shape who is responding and what is acceptable.
Haven’t you read anything he’s commented here?
He’s not objecting to the tone, but the content.
Corner Stone
@slag:
Hmmm…
slag
@Corner Stone: Don’t you go impugning my motives too. We all need a little thing called Hope. Whether we like it or not.
Corner Stone
@slag: Hope in one hand and poop Summers, Geithner, Immelt, et al in the other and tell me who’s impugned.
Corner Stone
@slag: And I’m not. IMO, others have been doing their level best to misread you this whole thread.
It’s not much of a shock why.
slag
@Corner Stone: Look, sparky. I’m not going to let you or anyone else here (even me!) push me a whole lot further in the direction of nihilism. That way Republicanism lies.
Also, that’s nice of you to say. At least I know that puts me in the realm of speaking English. Or at least, Corner Stone English. Which, now that I think about it, gives me concern :).
WaterGirl
@slag: Call me crazy, but I think some good things came out of the discussion. The great article Your Whiteness is Showing, for one.
I had been wondering lately about how we identify with other people who are “like us”. If I am going to gravitate, consciously or unconsciously, to another person who is like me, what is the stronger draw? Is it race? Or gender? Or a shared view of the world? There were threads of thought in this conversation that were relevant to that, which was a positive for me.
I didn’t really understand what was offensive about your asking for specific places where white women and women of color disagree, but then I didn’t catch that as a debate tactic that might be disingenuous. And I am white, so maybe the fact that I didn’t catch that it was offensive made someone’s point? So I stayed out of that part of the conversation.
I close the threads that are just back and forth with people who seem to just be here to disrupt, but I thought there was a genuine exchange of ideas taking place, at least part of the time, so I think that’s a good thing.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone:
For good or for bad, I have the ability to tune stuff out if I think it’s a useless distraction. I can read a magazine, for instance, and not even notice the ads. I’m never gonna buy anything I don’t need just because of an advertisement. (Confession though, I do like my electronic toys!)
I tune out commenters on this blog if the noise to content ratio is too high, so I glide right by m_c, and others that someone might use the pie filter on.
I paid attention to Allan for a day last weekend when people were attacking him and he seemed misunderstood, but once I perceived that he was pouting and poking at bears and trying to stir up trouble, I started tuning him out.
So no, I haven’t noticed that he’s driving a narrative; i just perceived his as behaving like a spoiled child so i tuned him out. But i’m generally fairly perceptive and I’m not used to having stuff go over my head like that, so I suppose now I will have to go back and read Allan’s comments and see if i agree that he is trying to control the narrative.
FlipYrWhig
@WaterGirl: IMHO he was trying to stick it to already-well-established shit-stirrers and troublemakers… but the problem is that they have seniority over him, and John doesn’t really mind them. It’d be like saying that Washington Redskins fans should stop wearing pig noses. They’ve been wearing pig noses for 30 years and aren’t going to stop just because some newcomer tells them it’s stupid.
slag
@WaterGirl:
I’m with you on this. It’s a web of complexity in many respects. If you haven’t read it, I find this SciAm Mind article to be useful in this respect:http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=bigot+in+your+brain+mind (the second link looks like a pdf article of it, though I haven’t read that version). A good overview, I thought.
WaterGirl
@slag:
That’s a good lead-in. i will definitely read the article. Thanks!
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: oh honey, you’re so very not self-aware, aren’t you?
I banned Tim (with whom I generally don’t have a problem even though we disagree) because he was being creepy.
To wit,
Yeah, hahaha. I put sexxitime pictures up on the blog to slut it up and show my tits. HILARIOUS.
Unsure as to whether or not I was being sensitive, I asked for John’s opinion. He agreed. So I banned Tim’s ass for a week. Blissfully and willfully ignorant of the facts, you proceeded to slag me across threads I was not involved in so you could appear to be king of fuck mountain; you continued to paint me as someone who goes whinging to John because you apparently missed the post where John said I had the ability to deal with assholes as I see fit. In doing so with respect to Tim, I thought it best to get John’s opinion since this is his joint.
When Tim returned with his new moniker, I found it humorous. I even found humorous his repeated sarcastic quips about how i’m never to be criticized. It was funny and I took his remarks in the spirit they were intended.
You, on the other hand, are a different beast. as John has mentioned repeatedly, you’re the one who seems to enjoy flinging poo hither and yon, which is why I asked you to stop talking about me and to exist in the space with me without interacting with me unless it’s substantively. You are obviously incapable of doing that. You’re obviously incapable of understanding how obnoxious you are. Not only do you refuse to argue a point in good faith, I don’t think you’re capable of it. When you’re proven wrong, you just call people liars and then you change the subject and fling more and more poo. I grew sick of it, so I asked you to stop. When I made it perfectly clear to you that I wasn’t going to put up with your bullshit, what was your response? this.
If you don’t find that behavior to be twisted and obsessive, then I can’t really help you. I think, however, you know how much of an asshole you are and you get pleasure from it. Fine. Who am I to deny you what little pleasure you have in your life? Just leave me the fuck out of it.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Woodrowfan: The important point is to make sure that those uppity women don’t go around thinking they got the franchise after black men, even if the timeline says so.
No one of Importance
@WaterGirl:
“But if your implication is that white women—on the aggregate—don’t prioritize those issues appropriately because of racist undercurrents, then I might buy that and maybe even rescind the point in my comment pertaining to priorities. ”
So I’m probably talking out of my white arse here, but what I’ve seen over and over in arguments between white feminists and women of colour is
1. Women of colour complain that white women are more than happy to scrabble for their rights by climbing up the backs of and digging their four inch heels into the skulls of women of colour, then kicking them in the face for good measure as they get up one more rung.
2. White feminists respond by saying they’ve never seen that happening, they don’t believe it’s happening because they’ve never seen it, and they then erase the differences in experiences and perspective between the two groups by claiming these don’t exist.
3. Women of colour, clutching their bruised faces and fractured skulls, stagger off back to where they don’t have to explain their every day experiences of racism, more convinced than ever that white feminists do diddly for anyone who isn’t white.
That’s exactly what’s going on here.
Yes, white women suffer from poverty, sexism, the threat of rape and violence, and the patriarchy. Women of colour suffer all that but *worse*. Not to mention the fact that in the USA (and here in Australia, if you’re indigenous) your fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers are much more likely to be in prison, much more likely to be unemployed or earning lower wages than whites, and both you and your men are facing lower life expectancies, poorer health (for you and your kids) and systematic mistreatment by all levels of bureaucracy.
By any measure, wherever white women have it had, black women have it worse in those two countries (and doubtless in many others, though I don’t have the stats to hand.)
So when some white twit of a VP nominee or commenter on a liberal blog makes the astounding statement that being black was somehow advantageous to Obama or any other black politician in *America* ( are you for real? I’m not even from your country and the dogwhistles are fucking deafening even this far away), and then a bunch of white people jump in to defend the fragile white lady’s fee fees because, you know, white women’s tears are more corrosive than acid and must not be borne….
Don’t be surprised when women of colour just want to kick you in the teeth.
And a few of us white girls wish you’d shut the hell up before you made such a spectacle of your privilege.
[Apologies to ABL and others for whitesplaining.]
WaterGirl
@No one of Importance:
You started with a quote that was not written by me, but maybe you directed this to me because I mentioned that I didn’t understand what was offensive about this comment by slag:
And I still don’t exactly understand why that was offensive.
Your description that followed (points 1-3) was well done and I completely agree that women of color have to deal with everything white women do, and much more. (I have relatives in Australia, by the way, so the fact that you are from there caught my eye.)
But I do not understand why you directed the following comment to me, because I found Anne Laurie’s comment really offensive and I think I was the first person on this thread to call Anne Laurie on what she had said (see my comments at 142 and 197 and elsewhere):
So maybe you have me confused with someone else?
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl:
It’s a long thread, so maybe it will help if I pull out a few of my comments.
asiangrrlMN
@No one of Importance: Thank you for that. You really nailed it on the head.
@WaterGirl: I think she is mistaking you with slag. It’s offensive to be asked to explain because two seconds on the Googles can get you the answer. It’s not my job to educate. And, because once I offered a few things that affect black women more than white women, I was told it wasn’t enough. Or that “oh, there’s no point in talking about it.” Or, the condescending, “If women are advanced as a whole, all women gain.” Well, no. That’s not true as I pointed out in various ways. In fact, as an Asian American woman, I would dare say I gained more from my race than from my gender.
Demanding that we put gender in front of race is a facet of race privilege. Demanding we explain it over and over and over again and decreeing the evidence is not enough is offensive.
I thank you for your efforts to discuss and for being open-minded. This reply is in response to your question about offensiveness, but the weariness and latent anger is not directed at you.
ETA: I would have happily voted for Clinton had she gotten the nomination. That’s another thing that pisses me off. I am all about the feminism, but I’ll be DAMNED if I overlook the racist words and/or behaviors of white feminists.
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: Thanks for the explanation.
As someone who has not been part of this conversation before, in any forum, seeing ABL say something like “I don’t have to tell you why, look it up for yourself in google” seemed like kind of a cop out to me.
You may have had this conversation (or at least the start of it) about a million times, but I would have no way to know that, so it is really helpful to see it laid out clearly. No one of Importance did a great job of laying it out, which is really helpful to anyone who wants to understand why you are/were so upset.
I honestly don’t think slag was being an ass; my impression was that he/she was also trying to have an honest conversation.
But when you say that you have laid it all out in the past and have been told it’s not enough or it’s not that big of a deal, now that would make me really mad.
If you’ve noticed me here over the past couple of years, you will know that I am not really one to challenge other people here, but when I saw what Anne Laurie wrote I just couldn’t let that go. I like Anne Laurie but I have to say that even after all the explanations, it still sounded like a dog whistle to me, which was really disappointing.
Two not completely unrelated things… I really appreciated the “Your Whiteness is Showing” article. It was really terrific.
And this conversation, or parts of it anyway, is reminding me of the Daily Show the day of Obama’s race speech during the campaign. John and Larry Wilmore decided to have a conversation on the show, and it was awesome. John talked about how the loud music came from the “black” cars and Larry was talking about how entitled white people act. It was funny but it was a really honest and gutsy exchange, i thought, and I think we could use a lot more of that.
No one of Importance
@WaterGirl:
I did indeed confuse you with Slag. I’m so not having a good morning here.
But then you said
People have tried to explain, and at this point, you need to go off and do the work yourself.
If you don’t get why Slag repeatedly dismissing the assertions of women of colour that they don’t feel white feminists have their best interests at heart, then my comment is applicable to you in any event. You and Slag can google. Look up ‘womanist’ if you want to see a bunch of black women rejecting the feminist label precisely because of the repeated infractions and offences of white feminists.
You might be politer than Slag, but you’re still making black women do your work for you. Which isn’t a good look for any white woman.
The ‘you’ in my comment was all the white women pouring scorn on the idea that the needs of white feminists may not align very well with those of black feminists, and to those making the frankly ludicrous comments about Obama’s alleged ‘black advantage;. Take which of my remarks apply to you or not.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: God bless your poor heart.
WaterGirl
@No one of Importance: I posted a comment at 241, just above yours, that I hope will explain why I didn’t see that comment as offensive.
I didn’t read all the back and forth between slag and others because it seemed to me both sides were missing some of the points of the other, and because at that point last night I was worn out.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m still making black women do my work for me. I am happy to engage on this issue and have a dialogue and learn something. But I’m less likely to engage if someone tells me to go google it for myself. Between the situation in Japan and being upset by women being raped in Libya and then dragged off by the government while talking with a bunch of reporters who are trying to interview her, not keep her from being dragged off for more rape and maybe murder, there’s a lot of competition for what I spend my time learning about.
I really appreciated the comment where you took the time to lay it all out, even though I didn’t think it made sense that it was directed to me. And because you took the time to lay it out, I am thinking about the issue.
Even though I was angry and offended by what AL said on here yesterday, it was interesting to see that even in her explanations of where she was coming from, AL couldn’t seem to see that she was still saying something offensive. And now you’re suggesting to me that I am behaving in an offensive way, and I can’t see it, but maybe you will no longer think that if/once you read the post above where I replied to asiangrl.
Anyway, it’s all food for thought.
eemom
@No one of Importance:
I’ve lost track of who said what to who, but yours is an excellent post.
You touched on another point that was made somewhere in the cesspool up above, which resonated with me even though I’m a white woman: that women of color back in the time of Geraldine Ferraro, and perhaps today as well, were, among all the other conflicts they had to endure, faced with a need to stand with their men against racial discrimination, as opposed to standing specifically for their rights as WOC.
Dunno if I’m saying that right because besides being white I’m getting kind of tired, but that just really made sense to me.
Anya
@No one of Importance: Thank you! My mom is always “whitesplaining” stuff, so I know how draining that can be.
No one of Importance
@WaterGirl:
Oh, I just totally understand. I mean, I barely had time to scrape up to come and comment over here just the once, you know? It’s just *awful* when you have to read about other people’s misery like that, isn’t it. Almost like living through it yourself. I read about that poor, poor girl in Tripoli and had to have a lie down, I was so upset. Fortunately, I still had my iPad next to me so I could keep up with things on the internet.
Tone is just, like, the most important thing ::nods:: Some of those black people are so *angry* when they talk about racism and it’s such a turn off, isn’t it?
I can see why you’re worried about my opinion. After all, in any discussion about racism, the most important thing is that no one goes away from it thinking you’re a racist. Or offensive. Heavens, I’m sure you didn’t mean to offend at all, and that’s, after all, all that matters.
I’m so glad that my white words were here to guide you through, dear. It’s always best to have someone of your own kind to listen to. It makes it so much truthier when a white person says it, don’t you think?
@Anya:
Not as draining, I’m sure, as being a person of colour and having to listen to whites bullshitting. (I think that’s what you meant but it read like doing the whitesplaining was exhausting. Which it might be, but only because white people insist on ‘winning’.)
eemom
@No one of Importance:
OMG, you are awesome! A little hard on WG, who clearly means well…..but that brutal, needle-sharp snark is of a quality never seen in this circus of bumbling clowns. Sheeyit, if you’d only shown up earlier in this godforsaken thread, the whole thing would’ve been over in 10 comments.
Please, please, come by more often.
WaterGirl
@No one of Importance:
So sorry, I must have misunderstood.
I thought we were engaging in meaningful dialogue on an issue that was important to you, and should be important to everyone, but now I see that you value snark and dismissiveness over all else.
Fuck you. I’m sorry I wasted my time.
No one of Importance
@WaterGirl:
Oh, racism in feminism *is* important to me, and unlike you, I’ve actually bothered to do a fair bit of reading and research on the subjct. But the only issue of importance *you* were engaged in discussing was proving that you’re a Nice White Lady ™ – which is only of importance to other Nice White Ladies ™.
I admit I can be a Nice White Lady ™ too at times – it’s hard to shake off a lifetime of training in the belief that one’s own personal reputation is more important than the welfare of brown people you’re not even related to. But I’m not as big a hypocrite as you, at least. Because I would *never* stoop so low as to use the rape and suffering of actual brown women as a deflection to hide the fact I don’t want to break a nail googling ‘racism in feminism’.
You’re not interested in ‘racism in feminism’. You just wanted a cookie.
“Fuck you.”
You couldn’t afford me.
Angry Black Lady
but yet i should take time out of my day to explain to you what i already know and what i’ve already said in my experience does not lead to a positive result when i also have ALL OF THE THINGS YOU MENTIONED TO LEARN ABOUT AND DISCUSS?
if you don’t want to spend literally 30 minutes skimming some articles on google written by black feminists because you have so much else to do, then why should i spend my time educating you?
how can you not see the ridiculousness of that statement?
Angry Black Lady
@No one of Importance: no apologies necessary. thank you for explaining it so well.
Angry Black Lady
@eemom: yes, seriously. i may be in love!