Since CBL (740AM in Toronto) went dark, and CBC radio one went to FM at CBLA/99.1FM*** and about a zillion low power FM repeaters, I can no longer get CBC1, so I didn’t hear this one [1].
Many Americans are misguided in thinking that a Barack Obama win will settle the race discussion in the U.S., Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Hillary Clinton supporter who drew attention this weekend for pointed remarks about Obama, told FOX News on Wednesday.
Following up on remarks he made to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in which he described Obama as a “mediocre” orator, Cleaver said he thought the Illinois senator will win the Democratic presidential nomination, but that doesn’t mean the work will be done trying to improve race relations in America.
“I think whites would say, ‘How could anybody say we were racist, that we have any racist residue when you look what we just did (potentially electing Obama)?’ And African Americans would say, ‘Look at what we just did. So now we ought to have unblocked access to all of our dreams, all of our hopes,'” Cleaver said.
Cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor, added that whites sometimes think that saying an African-American is “articulate” is a compliment, but in actuality it is symptomatic of latent low expectations.
“If you will remember earlier, one of the senators here referred to Senator Obama as ‘articulate.’ And I’ve never heard someone refer to Senator Clinton as articulate. I’ve never heard it,” he said.
“And I think there would be great disappointment when they saw some issue of race surfacing. It would be like, ‘Oh my goodness. I thought we were past that.'”
Of course, he’s a Clinton backer, and thereby might have been expected to say this. But the ‘Articulate’ thing… bringing that up is a stroke of brilliance we’ve not seen from the Clinton camp; and I’m inclined to accept it as genuine, because it’s simply too smart a play for Cliinton’s people to pull without a three year study. It falls directly into line with the objections we raised some months ago, when Joe Biden called him ‘clean and articulate’. Clearly, in that event, and many siuch comments since, the bar has been lowered quite a bit. It also idetifies what we’ve been saying right along, about how some were voting for him because of his racial identity and naught more, as if it was some kind of qualification.
And as with the subprime mess being the logical consequences of loaning money to peple who cannot afford it, simply because they happen to be of a racial minority, the logical consequences of lowering the bar for Obama will be a disaster, if he ever attains power as a result of it.
*** The small matter of having a 50,000 watt station two blocks away from me on 98.9fm doesn’t help, either