The latest political firestorm between the Clinton and Obama campaigns centers on some comments that Clinton supporter and former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro made to the Daily Breeze newspaper of Torrance, CA last Friday. Ferraro said, “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.â€
I disagree with Ferraro. If Obama was a white man, he would have already had the nomination sewn up by now. For her to say that he wouldn’t be in this position if he was a woman is silly because look at who she is supporting. Hillary Clinton is a woman, and she is doing just fine. This race is so close because Democrats have demonstrated that they have no problem voting for a woman. What Ferraro was attempting to do was to try to label Obama as a novelty candidate, who only has any popularity because the media loves his gimmick.
Ferraro also said that media is sexist and against Clinton. “I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign, to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against. For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign,†she said. In my mind, the media was too easy on Hillary Clinton for most of the past year. Not one member of the press had the guts to stand up and ask her how a junior senator can claim to have foreign policy experience, because she was married to a former president. If I marry a doctor, that doesn’t mean that I too can practice medicine. Yet, until recently, Hillary Clinton was able to co-op her husband’s resume without being challenged.
Is the media sexist? I don’t think that all media are sexist, but there is sexism in the hiring of television anchors. Why is it most female anchors are young and or attractive? Are you trying to tell me that there isn’t a female anchor under age 60 who can handle an hour on cable? I do think that there is sexism in the television business, but I don’t think that Hillary Clinton has gotten less coverage because she is a woman. If anything her gender and last name helped get more coverage than she deserves.
Ferraro said these things because she was trying to help Clinton, but I also believe that she was letting some of the bitterness from her failed 1984 campaign show. Her remarks do reveal a dismissive attitude that is prevalent among Clinton and her supporters towards the Obama campaign. There is a sense of entitlement in the Clinton campaign that rubs many people, including myself, the wrong way. Hillary Clinton has never approached this campaign asking for votes. She expected them, and when her expectations haven’t been met it has always been someone else’s fault. To me, Ferraro’s comments are an extension of this idea.
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12 users commented in " Was Geraldine Ferraro Correct About the Media and Obama? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI really agree with you.
You are right. Her comments were racist and out of order. It’s amazing that Hillary Clinton who made a big issue of Farrakhan on television allowed Ferraro to get away with this mess. There has been a pattern of racist comments from the Clinton campaign all attempting to discredit Obama. I am definitely voting for Obama in the fall. He deserves and will win the nomination. Hillary Clinton has no real experience. As Huckabee putting it it’s like a man saying that he’s had experience giving birth simply because he was in the room when his wife gave birth.
Ferraro: ‘Obama is lucky to be winning because he’s black.
Rendell: ‘Obama may be good but he can’t win because he’s black.’
Bill Clinton: ‘Obama = Jackson; they’re black.’
The Clinton campaign has found its message of passion and hope: that the politics of race will prevail.
What If Geraldine Ferraro’s Convicted-Felon Son Had Been Black?
It’s hard to speculate–with any degree of certainty, I mean–but something tells me this 1988 scenario might have played out a little differently:
John Zaccaro Jr., son of the 1984 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Geraldine A. Ferraro, is spending his four-month prison term for selling cocaine in a $1,500-a-month luxury apartment in Vermont with maid service, cable television and privileges at the Y.M.C.A. next door.
John Zaccaro Jr., son of the 1984 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Geraldine A. Ferraro, is spending his four-month prison term for selling cocaine in a $1,500-a-month luxury apartment in Vermont with maid service, cable television and privileges at the Y.M.C.A. next door.
He is staying at his own expense in one of 12 units in a building designed for expense-account business people on short assignments in Burlington, Vt. ”We like to think of it as a cross between an apartment and a hotel, with the advantages of both,” a spokeswoman for the building’s owners said, according to an article yesterday in The Daily News in New York.
Mr. Zaccaro, convicted in April of selling a quarter-gram of cocaine to an undercover officer, was determined eligible for the state Correction Department’s house arrest program, under which nonviolent convicts can find their own housing and live under what is said to be close supervision by correction officials.
John Quinn, who prosecuted Mr. Zaccaro, said, ”This guy is a drug felon and he’s living in conditions that 99.9 percent of the people of Vermont couldn’t afford.”
I am very concern with the issue that when a person speaks negative about Ohama that we are considered racist.
David Azelrod, Obama campaign manager is using the racist card when speaking about Ferraro statement.
Can we not say what is on our mind when it comes to Ohama?
Belvie me I am seeing it in the media no one wants to speak about this issue because their careers are at stake.
This is not freedom of speech this is fear of freedom of speech
Ms. Ferraro,
I am terribly disappointed. Your recent suggestion that Mr. Obamas’ success happened only because he is black is especially painful. To think that being black in America is a lucky thing strikes me as being inconsiderate.
I am a black person born the same year as Mr. Obamas’ wife 1964, and I can tell you at no time in my life was being black a lucky thing, or are you unaware of the sad and continuing legacy of American race relations. You disregard Mr. Obamas’ legitimate and laudable accomplishments by attributing them to one thing, and it’s the one thing Mr. Obama tries least to be – a man of race. Mr. Obama is a child of God, a husband, a father, a university graduate and a lawyer. Mr. Obama has been a stellar state representative of Illinois and he is currently a United States Senator, and great American. Somewhere probably in the high teens of the list of things Mr. Obama is would be black man.
The statements you have made and defend amount to making his race his primary attribute. You are playing the race card in a manner that is insulting, and quite frankly would be more expected from the kind of reactionary people America has hopefully outgrown.
In 1984 I was a student at the University of Southern California an institution with a traditionally conservative bent. I remember campaigning for and ardently defending a certain congressperson from New York as being more than just a woman, but a person regardless of gender worthy to potentially lead this country. I’m sorry to know now that I was wrong, and all the time any Gerard really would have sufficed.
This is for Geraldine. Geraldine: You really said nothing wrong. You are an honorable person. I apologize to you for the puritanical outcries about who you have become. I also am very sorry that our nation cannot escape patriarchy. I am more sorry that our so very influential press cannot seem to steer folks away from our puritanical thought patterns because they are self-emersed also. I did not know the Diane Sawyer who interviewed Geraldine Ferraro this morning.
As for Hillary and patriarchy…anybody but a woman, folks! Right? What I am waiting to see is the explosion between Mr. and Mrs. Obama. She knows he views Hillary as being inferior of competing with him because he is a man first and a man of color second. Michele has to privately wonder how much weight she bears on Barack’s man-o-meter. Sorry, Michelle, but it is there as big as day. He acts in a noticeably demeaning fashion toward Hillary.
Also noticeable is Mr. Obama’s fashion of delivering his campaign speeches (or orations) much like Reverend Martin Luther King. The striking difference is Reverend King was so very diplomatic that he could take a rock and still move forward in silence. I am worried that Barack would grab up a lot of rocks and start throwing back. This is not the type of “change” that interests me!
It is a dark forboding to allow
collegetown USA to force their favorite “teacher” on us as Democratic Candidate for the President. It guarantees the Republican Candidate for President a seat in the Oval Office, which is probably what big corporate and university sponsorship has calculated anyway. Obama goes away wealth–ier and Republicans once again reign.
People with good memories of past political firestorms who have come away from the voting process smarter each year (like myself at the age of 64) are going to be all but ignored because of the impressionable vote of American youth who want to get involved. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get involved, but this is not a popularity contest; the stakes are too high. Some self-conducted townhall meetings of our youth nationwide might help them hammer out what it is that this nation truly needs right now. “Change” is a very nebulous word. Change could be for better or for worse.
Ms. Ferraro:
I agree with you 100%. You were merely stating facts. After all 9 out of 10 African Americans are voting for Obama primarily because he is Black. Just like Hillary is getting votes from elderly women. It is what it is! No need to apologize you were brave in saying it like it is!
A Repulican
Ms Ferraro’s comments were hypocritical as all hell. C’mon folks…….would we even know Hillary’s name if she weren’t married to Bill? She has cashed in shamelessly on her last name, taking credit for anything good and denying responsibility for anything bad from the Clinton years.
So far, her most notable accomplishments are to top the list of first ladies to be personally involved in the most scandals.
So now she claims victimhood for being a woman? What CHUTZPAH!
The media have been reverential, deferential and treated Obama with kid globes. Up until Tina Fey’s SNL comic skit that handed journalists a mirror to their biased adoration of Oba-Myopia! Hillary, meantime, was trashed for being a woman, and was abused in a way that would have caused a less thick-skinned woman to bow out of politics. Hey, that’s why most of us are not in there! So, the flashy neophytes, the new kids on the block, with no experience and anorexic resumes get the spotlight on them. Obamyopia has given “Precious Obama” (as Lou Dobbs calls Him!) a media-stamped visa to escape real press scrutiny and criticism. Was his voice shrill, his pant-cleavage provocative, his hoop-playing awkward? Was he asked to “shine my shoes, boy”? Of course not! That would be “racist”. But, hey, if you’re a woman a 50A+ woman, it’s ‘free season’ to trash you around! Especially if you pose the threat to male power that Hillary does!
Let’s just hope the red phone never rings. And, by the way, COMEDIAN IS THE NEW JOURNALIST!
OBAMYOPICS have caused us to say with certainty:
COMEDIANS ARE THE NEW JOURNALISTS!!
Yes, Ms Ferraro, taken in proper context, your remarks on Media Misogyny and the rise of the neophyte with the anorexic resume are right on target! Thank you. Now if only women stopped being Maureen Dowdysh and started thinking for themselves, the media would not have given “Precious Obama” the free ride that it had PIOR SNL!! His Hopeness should read Jack Holland’s “MISOGYNY: THE WORLD’S OLDEST PREJUDICE” if he really hopes for some real CHANGE!!!
Why do we expect anything positive or true from someone who is married to a convicted tax thief and whose son is a convicted drug dealer. The apple dosn’t fall too far from the tree. Barak Obama is half black and half white for those who are really interested in the truth. If he was a white man, with his superior education, charisma, character, political skills and vision for America, he would have secured the nomination already. If Ferraro’s drug dealing son was black, he would probably be in prison for a long long time.
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