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27 Mayıs 2008 22:41:29
3334 Gösterim, 27 Yorum

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The Hillary Clinton camp blames Barack Obama for media uproar over her RFK assassination comment. Yeah, she really goes there...
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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign accused Sen. Barack Obama's campaign of fanning a controversy over her describing the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy late in the 1968 Democratic primary as one reason she is continuing to run for the presidency. "The Obama campaign ... tried to take these words out of context," Clinton campaign chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said on "Fox News Sunday." "She was making a point merely about the time line." The issue is particularly sensitive given longstanding concerns about Obama's safety as a presidential candidate. (He first received Secret Service protection last May.) The Obama campaign called Clinton's words unfortunate and circulated a TV commentary criticizing them, although Obama himself said Saturday that he took Clinton at her word that she meant no harm. Hours after mentioning Kennedy's assassination, Clinton said, "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family, was in any way offensive."

Asked if Clinton has personally called Obama to apologize for the reference, McAuliffe said she has not, "nor should she." He added, "Let's be clear. This had nothing to with Senator Obama or his campaign." McAuliffe noted that Robert F. Kennedy's son -- who endorsed Clinton last November -- has said that Clinton's reference to his father's death did not cross the line. "If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't find offense to it, why is it that everybody else should?" McAuliffe said. "They shouldn't. They ought to take Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- he did not misinterpret it or misjudge it."

Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation", Clinton senior strategist Howard Wolfson said McAuliffe is "absolutely right" that Clinton didn't want to apologize to Obama for the remark and said: "I think it was unfortunate to attack Senator Clinton's remarks without knowing fully what she had said."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-talk/2008/05/clinton_camp_stokes_rfk_flap_b.html?nav=rss_email/components
Not to beat a not-quite-yet dead horse but I agree with Emily and Melinda about Hillary Clinton's assassination comments. Clinton knew exactly what she was saying. That's why she repeated the comments after having already made the same point to Time magazine in March. How can she say her comments were prompted in part by Kennedy's cancer diagnosis when she had already said the same thing a few months ago when there was no talk of Kennedy having cancer? Perhaps the fact that her original comments did not get wide notice explains why she wanted to re-telegraph those sentiments to a wider audience. She seems too smart and calculating to be making so many subtle and not-so-subtle racially tinged remarks by mistake. Does anyone believe that it's not more effective to send these signals out and then say "Oops. So sorry. Never mind," then it is to not say them at all? Once she has sown doubts, raised fears, and planted ideas in the minds of people who have racial fears and animosities, she has effectively turned those people against her opponent. In Obama's case the threat of assassination has real resonance in the black community.

On another front, the racial overtones of some of Clinton's comments overall are further eroding relations between black women who support Obama and white women who support her. The extent to which these two groups will now see themselves as having shared political agendas is highly in doubt. Judging by the strong reactions of diehard Clinton and Obama supporters to a piece I wrote on this subject in Newsweek this week, it will be a very long time before we see strong black/white feminist coalitions being formed. My feeling is that by criticizing black women's support for a black male candidate over a white female candidate, white Clinton supporters are ignoring the duality of black women's identity and alienating them by expecting them to choose between their gender and their race. This is a luxury that black women just don't have.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2008/05/28/identity-wars.aspx