"Dr. King Didn't Just Give Speeches"
For Hillary to say with a straight face on Meet The Press this morning that she does not want “to inject race or gender” into the campaign is ridiculous. She is asking us to believe that the Clinton Machine is the most undisciplined, out of control campaign in the history of modern politics and that none of the dirty tricks or slander directed at Obama were authorized. Consider just part of the list:Iowa staffers circulating email saying Obama is a Muslim. Bill Shaheen accusing Barack of being a drug dealer. The phony ”Iron my shirt” plant followed by tears the next day.Bill calling Obama “a kid” and saying his opposition to the War in Iraq was “a fairytale”. Hillary saying Lyndon Johnson did more for the Civil Rights Movement than Martin Luther King. Andy Cuomo saying Obama’s appeal was just “shuck and jive”.
I for one, believe the Clinton’s have built a sophisticated attack machine and that none of these tricks were left to chance.
To top it all off today, BET founder Bob Johnson (with Hillary right behind him)said that while the Clinton’s were working so hard for Civil Rights, “Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing.” The Big Lie from Johnson who made his billions thanks to the Clinton’s telecom deregulation in 1996. I’m sure he’s grateful to Bill, but he doesn’t need to slander Barack to prove his gratitude. Barack has worked for Civil Rights since he wasin college, but I can’t find anything in Hillary’s biography in the critical years of the Civil Rights Movement (1963-1965) that shows that she did anything to further the cause. Many of us marched, sat in and some got arrested (including my brother). Her political hero in 1964 was Republican senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona who voted against the Civil Rights bill, remarking, “You can’t legislate morality.”
To Russert this morning, Hillary said, “Dr. King didn’t just give speeches. He marched, he sat in. He got arrested.” We had an old saying in the 60′s Hillary; “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.”
I’m stunned by this story- a story that could be cloned from hundreds of similar expositions across the net. And the stunning part? why do people hate Hillary? Why do we see so many thinly-sourced attacks on her?
[The corollary, of course, is why the right hated Bill].
Listen. I’m a Dem, through and through, and Biden was my guy, so not sure where I will go. So those are my bona-fides [yikes, as a classics major that actually hurts to type...].
So I’ll vote Democrat. But I still don’t get why there is so much visceral reaction to Hillary- the kind of raw reaction we see from Chris Mathews, and a similar, albeit slightly more thoughtful, reaction expressed in this column.
I just don’t see it.
msadesign-I think its a matter of hypocrisy. The Clinton’s are holding themselves out to be agents of change, but in their last regime they passed a great deal of legislation that gave more power to the entrenched interests:Banking deregulation, telecom deregulation, bungled health care are just a few I have mentioned in this blog. Remember The Who song–”Won’t get fooled again”