Now this is enough to give you heartburn: A minor Republican functionary in California comes up with Obama Bucks, which are food stamps, you see, with the senator's picture, and that is illustrated, get this, with a bucket of fried chicken and a slab of watermelon. The woman, Diane Fedele, says she didn't see anything racist about it. Of course not.Typical of Kurtz' writing. He doesn't give his opinion very much. When he does, he tosses it off in a few words. Three, in this case.
Also in today's Post, a very different piece of writing. It's by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and it gives his take on why attacks on Barack Obama's associates should not be dismissed as racist. He concludes:
... Weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."
McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a preemptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.
What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
I once believed him.
No comments:
Post a Comment