Into the black hole of political correctness

I first ventured into the bizarre world of politically correct presidential politics six weeks ago when I wrote about Bill Clinton being scolded by the national media for comparing Barack Obama's success in South Carolina with Jesse Jackson's success there 20 years before.

We heard that Clinton had "played the race card," and he was castigated by the national media for having somehow done something dastardly, when all he actually did was tell the truth at a time when many Democrats did not want to hear it.

The same thing happened last week when liberal Democrat Geraldine Ferraro made the mistake of questioning whether Obama was the right person to be elected president in 2008, or whether he was just the right man in the right place at the right time to get elected.

Those are, of course, two very different things, and if we were reasonable people we would be able to have a reasonable discussion about the differences. Ferraro, who supports Hillary Clinton, raised the prospect in an interview with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., that "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."

Ferraro is certainly not the first person to consider the possibility that Obama has become a nearly unstoppable force in the Democratic Party in large measure because of who he is - not because of what he stands for. This seems almost like a foregone conclusion, when you consider all the better qualified candidates who were easily trounced by Obama. And it clearly plays a part in the political pundits' pronouncement that Obama cannot lose the nomination now without ripping apart the Democratic Party. The so-called superdelegates are supposed to be able to vote for whoever they wish to vote for, but they are being warned that if they "steal" the nomination from Obama, black voters will revolt and throw the election into doubt. And, of course, Obama would not have a lead in the delegate race today at all were it not for the fact that he has been receiving 80 percent or more of the black vote, which is the core Democratic vote in many states.

That certainly sounds like "who" Obama is matters at least as much as what he says.

As noted, Ferraro is just the latest of several liberal Democrats who have found out that race, not Social Security, is now the deadly third rail of American politics.

Ferraro is not just any liberal Democrat either; she is the former front woman for the advancement of women in politics, replaced only in the current year by Hillary Clinton. It was Ferraro who was the first woman to appear on a major political party's presidential ticket, albeit on the bottom of the ticket, when she ran with Walter Mondale in 1984.

And Ferraro is wise enough to admit that she was picked to run as vice president solely on the basis that she was a woman. "In 1984 if my name were Garard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice presidential candidate," Ferraro told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America."

Sawyer was one of several reporters who tried to paint Ferraro as somehow saying something inappropriate, which made the news coverage appear almost to be a sequel of the "Saturday Night Live" sketch where members of the press fawned over Obama and savaged Hillary.

In this case, however, even Sen. Clinton was taking Obama's side, calling Ferraro's comments "regrettable." It's too bad Clinton doesn't have the courage to acknowledge the truth of Ferraro's comments, because she has no chance to win the nomination unless she can counteract the notion that Obama "deserves" to win.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me. Keith Olbermann, the paid political consultant masquerading as a journalist on MSNBC scolded Hillary Clinton quite loudly in one of his "oh so special" comments Wednesday night, noting that her "insensitive reaction" to the words of Ferraro was "slowly killing the chances of any Democrat to be president."

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," as we would expect Jerry Seinfeld to say after making such a politically unbalanced remark. But Olbermann has long since given up any pretense of fairness in his reporting - he is merely a mouthpiece for Democractic Party propaganda. No wait, I need to give credit where credit is due. Olbermann is not just a mouthpiece; he is actually a very inventive rhetorical assassin who doesn't just mouth the party line, but oftentimes originates it. In large part, he is to the Democratic Party what Rush Limbaugh only thinks he is to the Republican Party.

Earlier on his show, Olbermann had interviewed Eurgene Robinson of the Washington Post who noted correctly that "Geraldine Ferraro says, you know, she's been called a racist and Bill Clinton was called a racist," but then he argues that "Nobody calls her a racist. Nobody called Bill Clinton a racist. What was said is that what she's - you know the sentiments she expressed, what she said was arguably a racist thing to say. But that's about action, that's about words. It's not about her essence or her being."

Of course, Robinson was doing what most television commentators do - he was saying what he thought he could get away with, and within 30 seconds of saying he knows that Ferraro is not a racist, he said that Ferraro's comments were "clearly meant to belittle and denigrate Obama because of his race."

Huh? Come again? Sounds racist to me, if that's really what she meant to do. And apparently it sounded racist to Keith Olbermann, because he concluded his special comment by demanding that Hillary Clinton distance herself from Ferraro's "words, and the cheap, ignorant vile racism that underlies every syllable of them."

Yet hold on here. Let's take another look at the words that caused all this controversy - "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."

Vile? Ignorant? Racist? Not even close, but the more that the mainstream media tries to inoculate Barack Obama from the legitimate conversation about who he is, how he became who he is, and where he wants to take the country, the more they will damage the cause of race relations in this country. You cannot run for president in this country without being able to absorb criticism and demonstrate convincingly to the public that the criticism is unfounded.

Ronald Reagan didn't have to convince anyone to vote for him on the basis of race, but he did have to persuade people that he was not too old to be president. People questioned his fitness for office on the basis of his age much more overtly than anyone has used race as a factor in the 2008 election. But Reagan did not condemn people for their "age-ism" or demand that people stop asking questions about his age. He just used his age to his advantage by making Walter Mondale squirm (and even laugh) as the elderly president cajolingly responded to a debate question: "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Too bad, none of today's candidates (white or black, man or woman) have the grace or wit of Ronald Reagan. Instead of a humorous rejoinder to an obvious poke, what we get today is defensive self-righteousness and finger-pointing.

Within two days, Ferraro had been forced to resign her honorary position with the Clinton campaign, but to her credit she refused to be silenced even though she had been marginalized.

And by the end of the week, a new controversy had erupted - the words of Barack Obama's longtime pastor had come to light blaming America for AIDS, importing illegal drugs, and promoting white supremacy. In one now famous quote, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. even called on God to damn America for its profligate ways.

No word yet on whether it is racist to point out that Barack Obama has called Wright a mentor, a consultant and a "sounding board" for more than 20 years. Let's wait a week and see whether this, too, falls into the category of things best left unsaid in Democratic politics. It seems like the black hole of unmentionables is growing by leaps and bounds, but eventually we have to come out the other side, don't we?