In today's pages: Is Obama really 'post-racial?'
Contributing editor Erin Aubry Kaplan says Barack Obama isn't the post-racial panacea that everyone thinks he is:
The core of the resistance to seeing Obama as what he is -- a black man -- even among his supporters (or perhaps especially among his supporters) is an assumption that he is capable and successful because he is "other." Beneath the post-racial talk and the how-black-is-he speculation lies an antebellum belief that blackness is inherently limiting, while whiteness is inherently transcendent. (Blackness is, however, inherently good for style and "soaring" oratory, qualities the media have been quick to attribute to Obama.)
Columnist Joel Stein says female running mates could save men the wrath of women mad about missing the chance for a female president. Author and former prison detainee in Tehran Zarah Ghahramani objects to Americans' radicalized image of Iran.
The editorial board praises newly-appointed Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. It also looks at two cases that will test the Supreme Court's commitment to protecting Americans from searches, and notes that ships can keep polluting California's ports unless lawmakers take action.
Readers react to The Times' poll on the presidency. See why Pasadena's Siddarth Dasgupta says, "The Democrats have not yet chosen their nominee, and you are already lining up to mislead the voting public."
I believe Obama is post racial I'm just not sure if we are. Obama has not based his candidacy on race. He has never made the appeal that you should vote for me because having a black guy in the white house will be so different. He has actually gone out of his way to avoid making his campaign about race. He is making every attempt to focus on unifying themes yet the status quo is a formidable opponent.
This is an interesting social expirement. If you take a black guy who's career is not based on Civil rights, who has the same ivy league education past president's have had..who's held elected office on both the state and national level..how will people receive him? The guy was president of the Harvard Law Review and wrote two books. He is clearly brilliant. When you take a black guy with a funny name and then add to the fact that he is completely qualified..then ad to the fact that he is not trying to leverage white guilt for political office..we can only blame ourselves as a society if race proves to be a hinderence to Obama. Sure..his name is not John Smith...Unfortunately, its not surprising to see opposition take shots at his name. Wow..I thought we were bigger than that but I guess not.
Posted by: Wayne | February 29, 2008 at 12:29 PM
MC-CAIN STRATEGY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL BATTLE OF THE AMERICAN CULTURAL WAR
McCain, with Neo-Lib Hillary now burnt at the stake by Kennedy Liberals, is the presidential candidate of the desperate Podhoretz Neo-Cons and Leiberman Neo-Libs. His puppeteer, that shrewd political trickster Charlie Black, to compensate for McCain’s core values being notoriously subversive to traditional Reagan Conservatism and Kennedy Liberalism, shall presumably follow Marxist strategy and tactics, to get McCain a date for the presidency or date for the Republican firing squad.
This strategy shall be to miraculously transform Podhoretz Neo-Con McCain into a Reagan Conservative, to buy betrayal from Judas ministers for 10 pieces of silver, to buy betrayal from turn-coat Conservatives for promises of pork, to suppress internet freedom of speech by hook or by crook, and to orchestrate political collusion among the millions of Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs.
Then slanderous propaganda attacks shall be made against Obama’s youthful mistakes, his mother, his father, his religion, and his friends; and hate-baiting attacks shall be made against selected religious and political groups within his broad spectrum of supporters. These deception strategies are all based on the belief that the majority of American voters are sufficiently gullible to be fooled.
But this strategy is flawed, because the leading Conservatives and Liberals have long recognized that their enemies in the American Cultural War are the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs in the government, colleges, schools, news media, and Hollywood. Their incessant subversion of traditional Christian culture and the Constitutional government has been intensifying since the McCarthy Era, when defeated as Marxists they evolved into crypto-Marxists, Neo-Marxists known as the Neo- Conservatives and the Neo- Liberals, to resume their relentless ideological struggle to gain political control over the social and economic resources of the America People.
But it is well within the powers of the Reagan Conservatives and Kennedy Liberals, fighting shoulder to shoulder, to defeat McCain and expel the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs, for the common goals of restoring their traditional Christian culture and Constitutional government.
There are two strategies to defeat the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs. The first is a coordinated offensive, where both Reagan Conservatives and Kennedy Liberals vote for Obama. The second is for the Kennedy Liberals to vote for Obama; and for the Reagan Conservatives to vote for Ron Paul, Huckabee, and Romney as their write-in candidates. The first strategy offers the additional benefit of quickly re-unifying the Republicans and Democrats spiritually, under their shared love of Christian culture and Constitutional Law, against the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs who have so bitterly divided them.
Posted by: Jeugenen | February 29, 2008 at 11:09 AM