On the morning of the West Virginia primary, Washington Post Associate Editor Kevin Merida published a blockbuster story about ugly racial incidents experienced by Obama campaign workers that continues to fuel debate.
Media pundits are now using it to prove that “Clinton is willing to ride these biases to the White House.”
Yet, in a startling admission, Merida has revealed that he also knew of similar, if not worse, abuse suffered by Clinton campaign workers, yet chose not to report it.
In an NPR interview with Michele Norris, the following dialogue took place in the last 45 seconds of the five-minute interview entitled “Confronting Bigotry on the Campaign Trail: The Obama Campaign has Chosen Not to Publicicize Incidents of Racial Slurs and Slammed Doors.”
Norris: Do you have any sense as to whether staffers working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign have faced ugly comments, similar resistance, have faced any degree bigotry based on her gender?
Merida: Well, yeah, Michele, that’s a very great point because I also heard from a lot of Clinton supporters that said people have said very misogynistic things. In some ways I think that people find it easier to say “I will not vote for a woman,” than they will say, starkly, that they will not vote for an African-American.
Merida did not explain why, in his story, he suppressed half of the bigotry he uncovered.
Nor did he explain why he omitted news that the Clinton campaign similarly chose not to publicize such incidents.
Norris did not enquire as to the reason for the Post’s suppression.
Front page
Misogyny doesn't fit the narrative
“WV is filled with racist hillbillies that support Hillary, that’s why it (the 41-point asswhipping) don’t count.”
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“Pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever” - Shane Falco
Obama who has allegedly transcended all things
- or so I was informed on HuffPo last week - has made clear that misogyny doesn’t matter. Calling women witches (an epithet that has it’s weight because it resulted in a fiery, horrific death for tens of thousands of women) and fucking whores is acceptable rhetoric for campaign supporters. Of course, the candidate wouldn’t allow those words to come out of his mouth, but then he is transcendent.
Since 85-90% of African Americans vote for Obama
That means any more than 10-15% of any other group voting for Clinton must be racists.
That is just logical.
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Good night and good riddance!
Don't you know? IOKTHV
don’t you know, in the media, it’s (always)
okay to hate vagina.
move along now.
dupager
I'm not gonna touch that
n/t
————————————————————————
“Pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever” - Shane Falco
HEY!!!
I’m trying to work here :o).
: >
(you guys rock!)
Bo, fascinating post
Thanks!
GQ, if you were working (on the thesis, I suspect) you wouldn't
be blogging. Then again if I was working (at work) I wouldn’t be blogging either. Nevermind.
Silly as it sounds, sexism is allowed because women are the fixers, the doers, the ones who suck it up and try to make things right. And in order to be accepted we’re supposed to tolerate the innuendo and double entendre.
Now for something completely different. Hey, how about those Celtics! Game 1 tomorrow night v Pistons. It’s gonna be crazy mad.
I love this job!
Wow! Great Catch, Bo
I thought the original Merida article was under-researched and over-stated, especially around the notion that he had interviewed a sufficient number of WV voters to have anything intelligent to say about the role of racism in their decision-making.
Naturally, it wouldn’t occur to someone like that Sun-Times columnist or Merida himself to contrast the kind of overt racist incidents described by Obama staffers and the kind of complaints raised by both the press and the Obama campaign as playing the race card.
Great post, too BoGardner, you set up the context beautifully for your links, and then that corker about Merida tabling sexist incidents.
The Plural of "Anecdote" is NOT "Data"
Many thanks, Leah.
Good point about the number of interviews… there’s a fundamental premise in the world of the hard sciences (as opposed to the oxymoronic “political science”) which states:
Ahh, science and reason, where are they these days? Hillary has promised to end the Bush war on science in her first 100 days, in part by re-establishing the deeply respected Office of Technology Assessments that once kept government honest. Obama? Not so much.
So women, as Hillary said, must be "impervious"
I think your reasoning is a big part of it.
Sociologists and psychologists will one day have a field day analyzing this.
Lambert, I didn't mind...
… your now vanished comment. I laughed when I read it.
My post was actually MUCH nicer than the first version…
No reason to make nice...
… though it does sound like you’ve got a critique of the science policies of the two candidates that would be interesting to hear about…
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
If You've Got a Policy Post in You
I’d love to read it.
Now that you two mention it
I daresay I do have a few more thoughts and info on the candidates and science. I’ll try to get to it shortly. Hmmm, wonder if Oregonians are listening???
Well
Obama is the triumph of word over flesh. If there are no words used to tell a story, did the story really happen?
Some, for sure
Whether enough… But your call.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.