Does everyone need to muck up their political careers by talking carelessly about how Obama speaks?
Now, the new Heilemann/Halperin book seems to have really gone full-court press at digging up unpleasant dirt. The part on the Edwardses is nasty and the use of an anonymous account of a dead dude’s comment to smear Clinton seems par for the course as well. Of course Halperin, who critiqued Obama’s lack of party going recently, seems to embrace the Washingtonian society mentality and seems to consider recording the gripes of jilted staffers anonymously trashing their foes to be high journalism.
Of course, Reid seems to be his trophy buck. Reid seems to have told Halperin on background, who promptly reported it on foreground, that Obama could have been the first black president due to his lighter skin tone and his ability to forgo a manner of speaking that would be racially coded as black. Except Reid used a less politically correct way of saying it, saying that Obama could “speak with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
Now obviously Reid was stupid to have used that word since when the adjective embattled has already been added to your name as an additional title you probably want to avoid having the phrase “race controversy” as the object of any sentence in which you are a subject. And while plenty are defending him or attacking him, I’d add two separate points.
Read the rest of this entry »
