Obama’s big speech in Philadelphia zoomed in and out with brave deftness and surprising candor. He denounced Rev. Wright’s comments but not Rev. Wright. He talked about his white grandmother’s casual racism. He touched on America’s sad racial history (in great detail), but said that the country was not “irrevocably tied to it.” And maybe Read More
Barack Obama and Reverend Wright. Via Ben Smith: Barack Obama will give a major speech on “the larger issue of race in this campaign,” he told reporters in Monaca, PA just now. He was pressed there, as he has been at recent appearances, on statements by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. “I am going to Read More
We’ve had this conversation on here before sorta: people don’t think they can be sexists/misogynists because they don’t rape/beat women; people don’t think they’re classist because they don’t spit on their maids; people ain’t racist because they’ve never attended a cross-burning. Ta-Nehisi Coates goes to town on the idea that racism is a lingering problem Read More
Even though we usually agree with Keith Olbermann when he drops these bombs, they tend toward the long-winded/preachy. (10 minutes? Gotdamn.)
But Obama, being all about that bridge-building, delivered Senate speeches with this as his intro, so maybe we shouldn’t question his hip-hop bona fides too tough.
Oh, it’s about to get irreverent up in here. Hillary Clinton, eager to boost her ‘red phone’ credentials, has been citing a 1996 trip to the Balkans as part of her foreign policy experience. Also on that trip? Sheryl Crow and Walter Oakes Sinbad. Sinbad, a Barack Obama supporter, said to Mary Ann Akers of Read More
Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro today defended a remark she made to the Daily Breeze last week, in which she suggested that Sen. Barack Obama would not be where he is if he were white. In an interview with the Breeze, Ferraro said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in Read More
That’s the ad. Read the column here.
Ann Friedman hits the nail square on the head in a recent column on identity politics in The American Prospect.
