I am sick of phrases like 'playing the race card' and 'playing the victim card'. Everyone and his dog uses them with a frequency that makes me want to throw dishes. I will use them here, though, for want of some new ones; mercifully, I can use them this one last time and then never again!
For months, Obama has been accused of playing the race card. I cringe every time he so much as uses the word 'black', knowing what's coming. If the poor man used that word to describe the clouds overhead, somebody's cat, or the ink in a fountain pen, he'd be charged. Either by the Hillary campaign and for purely selfish purposes, or by those who see the race card being played all the time and everywhere.
Hillary's been charged with playing the victim card, with equal frequency. (The sexism card, too, but never mind that now.) Each time she cries or even almost cries, each time she chides the press for its' bias against her, you hear things like, "There she goes again, poor, poor me, I'm a victim!" Over the top, some of it; Hillary is human and even if she does play cards now and again, it isn't shocking, given that she's going for the presidency.
The charge against Hillary of playing the victim card the night before the New Hampshire primary, is understandable. And it may even be that the charge against Obama of generally playing the race card, is the same. Understandable does not mean true. How can we know? Here is something Obama said in an interview with Anderson Cooper when asked whether the Jeremiah Wright thing "had reminded him of the odds he faces in winning the White House,":
"In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than than some of the other conventional candidates."*
It has to be said that he was drawn on this, by Cooper, who asked him about the odds he faces in winning the presidency. Almost certainly, Cooper was thinking of his race. Obama responds almost in tags: 'odds', 'lower','conventional', and even 'remembering'. He has to remind himself that the odds of a black winning the presidency are lower than that of the other candidates, who are white; here, 'conventional' means 'white'. Drawn or not, he has played the race card; but I say he has the right.
For where are the videos of Hillary's pastor or McCain's pastor in their more animated moments, supposing some exist? Answer: in the vault, and with no journalist begging to have a look. In fairness, the pastors of all three candidates, not just Obama's, should have been interviewed and shown in video, if any exist, on FOX, CNN, MSNBC, et al.
I believe, and so do many of you, that his pastor was exposed because Obama is black. The only other explanation is that Wright was exposed because of his ever-so-strong views; the other pastors, suppose, don't have views that strong. This won't wash: the idiot who decided that what their pastors preach is even relevant should have read the sermons of all three. And he would have, had he not been up to mischief.
As for the victim card, Obama's talk of being shaken up by this sorry business, is, combined with something else, all I have to go on. The something else is that Obama is one of the most careful speakers in the country, whether in speeches, taped or live interviews, or over a burger in a sandwich shop. I don't believe that his 'shaken me up a little bit' was a slip of the tongue. I believe he really was shaken up at being singled out like that, and that he wanted the voters to know it. He'd been targeted by some small-minded people who wanted a media blitz on him because he's black. The white guys were left alone. When it comes to the Jeremiah Wright story, Obama is a victim of racism. On that, if anyone has the right to play the race card, the victim card, or both and all at once, it is Obama. And I believe he just has.
*From CNN Political Ticker March 19, 2008: Anderson Cooper interview of Barack Obama CNN.com