Irony: Ferraro Decries "Guilt by Ethnicity"!

Back in 1992, Geraldine Ferraro was outraged by attempts to link her and her husband to the mob because of their ethnicity (NYT, 10/8/92):

*Sept. 8 -- With a week before the election, Mr. Abrams accuses Ms. Ferraro of failing to release documents that would show her and husband's partners in at least eight corporations or partnerships. Ferraro aides say Mr. Abrams is trying to suggest that she has mob ties, and Ms. Ferraro, denying any interest in the companies, lashes back at Mr. Abrams: "Guilt by ethnicity has been succeeded by guilt by postal address."

Guilt by ethnicity! It is so very wrong to make allegations about someone based purely on their ethnicity!

Oh the irony.

You would think, as the victim of such offensive attacks, Ms. Ferraro would possess a unique sensibility with respect to such matters.

Sadly, no.  As evidenced by her gross remarks today regarding Senator Obama, she appears to have learned nothing from her experiences with racial and ethnic discrimination.

In fact, I'm sure Ms. Ferraro would think it to be very unfair if I went into gratuitous detail here about the scurrilous accusations that she has ties to organized crime.

Aug. 19 -- The Village Voice publishes an article with the headline "Gerry and the Mob," identifying what it said were 24 mob figures as supporters or business associates of Ms. Ferraro or her husband, John A. Zaccaro, or their parents. Mr. Abrams, describing himself as "gravely disturbed" by the article, says New Yorkers "must seriously consider whether Geraldine A. Ferraro's lack of an ethical compass makes her fit to hold a high position of public trust." Ms. Holtzman used the headline with the word "Mob" in subsequent television commercials; Mr. Abrams did not.

WHEN GERALDINE FERRARO made her ill-starred quip about "Italian men" early in the campaign, she caught a lot of flak from Italian-American organizations. We're starting to think she had some excuse: She and her husband appear to be surrounded by a somewhat unrepresentative sampling of male Italian-Americans.

-- Michael LaRosa, a convicted racketeer, was a longtime business associate of the P. Zaccaro real-estate company. He donated money to two of Mrs. Ferraro's campaigns.

-- Aniello Dellacroce was a top figure in the Gambino crime family. He lived in a building that he rented from the Zaccaro company.

-- Joseph LaForte, another Gambino biggie, now owns that building (Gerry Ferraro, acting as a lawyer, having managed the curious intermediate sale). John Zaccaro also manages another building he owns, which serves as a mob social club.

-- Robert DiBernardo is a pornography distributor with links to both the Gambino family and that of Sam (The Plumber) DiCavalcante. He and his companies rent space from the Zaccaro company in a nearby building.

-- Carmine Parisi, manager of Mrs. Ferraro's first campaign, was a close asscoiate of the convicted racketeer anthony Scotto, yet another Gambinista.

-- William P. Masselli has just been indicated along with LAbor Secretary Raymond Donovan. He has a long record of kidnapping, truck hijacking, robbery, and related pursuits, but in a civic-minded moment he gave the maximum legal donation of $1,000 to a Ferraro campaign.

But the man who has probably done more than any other to shape Gerry Ferraro's ethnic stereotype is John Zaccaro himself. Mr. Zaccaro has lately been questioned about mismanaging a widow's estate, participating in a poverty-program swindle, and securing an improper $500,000 loan through a credit union.

link

And oh no! What's this? Don't tell Hillary - another sweatshop landlord!

Geraldine Ferraro: Sweatshop Landlord
Long Hours, Low Pay, Rancid Conditions Are Commonplace at Senate Candidate's Building

March 10th, 1998 12:00 AM

A SOHO building partially owned by U.S. Senate candidate Geraldine Ferraro and managed by her husband, John Zaccaro, has housed 35 Chinese garment-manufacturing companies over the past few years--many of them nonunion and some apparently illegal.

While an attorney for the current tenants insists they are not sweatshops, a Voice investigation has uncovered an array of conditions identified with sweatshops: piecework pay; 15-hour days; seven-day work weeks; boarded-up windows; blocked exits; crowded, filthy facilities; gut-wrenching fumes; and fly-by-night corporate shells.

Many of these conditions were observed during a half-dozen Voice visits to the premises, one of which was made by experienced garment workers who are both fluent in Chinese and connected to a labor organization. ...

Revelations that a mob-tied pornography company occupied much of the same building undermined Ferraro's vice-presidential candidacy in 1984 and her last Senate race in 1992. That space is now filled with garment manufacturers.

The state Department of Labor could find no registration for 10 of the firms listed in the building at various times since 1988--meaning they may have operated illegally. DOL lists 10 more as ''out of business.'' One tenant, Forum Trading, has been cited by DOL for stiffing workers on overtime pay.

...

The building itself also has had its share of problems--including at least 20 code violations and $4075 in city fines. An artists' co-op next door has filed a hotly contested lawsuit against the owners and tenants, alleging that toxic chemicals, including perc and benzene, are being emitted into a joint courtyard, and that the Zaccaro building is an industrial boombox, with a phalanx of ventilating fans droning until 1 a.m., even on weekends.

In addition to Ferraro's 25 per cent stake in the seven-story building, located at the corner of Lafayette and Broome streets (and known as 200 Lafayette and 418 Broome), she has long been a one-third owner of the firm that manages it: P. Zaccaro Company, her husband's family business.

link

Also interesting - Ms. Ferraro's views on experience and qualifications for public office:

Well, let me first say that I wasn't born at the age of forty-three when I entered Congress. I did have a life before that as well. I was a prosecutor for almost five years in the district attorney's office in Queens County and I was a teacher. There's not only what is on your paper resume that makes you qualified to run for or to hold office. It's how you approach problems and what your values are. I think if one is taking a look at my career they'll see that I level with the people; that I approach problems analytically; that I am able to assess the various facts with reference to a problem, and I can make the hard decisions.

link

Geri - here is a suggestion for you.  Next time you, Hillary and Mark Penn sit down together to plan some race-baiting over giggles and coffee...THINK.  Stop and think how much of your very ugly political history you want dredged up for public display as others are examining the credibility and context of your remarks.

•  how about Michelle's race baiting

  where she said "black america will come to its senses", or when Jesse Jackson Jr. implied that Hillary didn't cry for Katrina victims, or the Obama memo which stressed "racial insensitivity", or twisting Bill Clinton's "fairytale" remark? That all happened before this, yet Obama is getting a free pass.

  by deaniac20 on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:13:30 PM PDT

  •  why are you an apologist for bigots

    like Hillary and her supporters?

    Disgusting.

    by JLFinch on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:17:51 PM PDT

  •  Yes, I agree

    I can't stand the insufferable and oppressive racism of African-Americans!

    Hint to deaniac20 - race is REALLY complicated and to apply the same rubrics of cultural sensitivity to a minority community as one does to a majority community is often just an easy way to ignore history.

    by billysumday on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:22:46 PM PDT

  •  Michelle's race baiting?????

    how about YOUR dishonesty.

    Michelle was speaking about Afican Americans who will not vote for African American Presidential candidates because they have overwhelmning doubts that an African American candidate can win a Presidential election.  She was saying that once Barack has won enough to prove to them that he can really win the whole race that their doubts will be erased and they will be willing to make a decision about whether or not to vote for him based on his merit instead of dismissing him based on his race.

    It was the OPPOSITE of race baiting.  It was COMBATTING race based doubts among African Americans that have held back their confidence in  an African American candidate.  

    And who are you to tell an African American woman that she is race baiting because she is trying to help Afican Americans overcome the doubts that an Afican American can be President that are based on hundreds of years of oppression of Afican Americans.  

    You think that Afican American forget that in just 1961 that there were states where inter-racial marriage was ILLEGAL.  1961 was the year that Barack Obama was born to a white woman and a black man here in America.   A marriage that would have been a crime in some states.

    You think that YOU have the right to accuse the wife of a man, who's parent's marriage was illegal in some states when he was born, of RACE BAITING, because you have no fucking clue what the fuck the context of what she was saying was because YOU are an IDIOT?!!

    by AntonBursch on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:47:41 PM PDT

    •  well, today, such activity is NOT illegal

      and there are no oppressive laws out there to make it such. She's supposed to be uniting people of all races, not just the black race. Why didn't Bill Richardson say that all hispanics would "come to THEIR senses?" Why hasn't his campaign accused anyone of being insensitive to Latinos? There were laws against them too, you know. joe lieberman never said jews would come to their senses by voting for him.

      And even if we go by your points, the fact is, if Obama is the nominee, her words about race AND the "patriotic" remark may be used against her at the GOP convention, as will the other actions of the Obama campaign. regardless of who the nominee is, I want a Democrat in the White House by next year, because unlike you, I am a strict partisan with strict loyalty, which means discipline enough to help put at least a member of the RIGHT party into the White House, unless the member were Hitler, but he would be a Republican.

      I don't get it. Michelle Obama wants her husband to be the "black candidate" to suit political purposes at the time of interview, or when Jesse Jackson jr. smears Hillary, or when they take BC's remark out of context. I thought the Obama camp didn't just wanna be the "black candidate". Looks like they're tryin to get it both ways.

      by deaniac20 on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 09:07:17 PM PDT

      •  go write your own diary

        and publish all your racist musings there.

        you are making me sick.

        by JLFinch on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 09:09:51 PM PDT

•  Irony?

  Where I come from it's either called dead on hypocrisy and/or blatant racism.  Whatever.  After Bush we are in the post ironic age.

  by mayan on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:13:45 PM PDT

  •  This is Alanis Morissette irony

    Rain on your wedding day, or race-baiting when you've previously decried similar tactics.  Regular irony is something different.

    by theran on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:21:25 PM PDT

•  Y'all don't get it

  This isn't about race.  This is about an extremely myopic HRC supporter who cannot POSSIBLY understand why someone would prefer Obama to Hillary.  The most obvious thing to differentiate the two is his race.

  Wait.  Maybe it is about race.

  Anyway, this was an interview in a stupid paper in Orange County or whatever.  We're making this into a much bigger story than it would have been otherwise.

  by billysumday on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:19:58 PM PDT

  •  Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary are engaging

    in a coordinated campaign of planned race-baiting.

    To me, that IS a big deal.

    by JLFinch on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:21:51 PM PDT

•  My experience w Zaccaro as a landlord

  did not necessarily show him as tied to the mob, but certainly revealed him as ethically challenged.

  Early '80s, 10 Bleecker St, ground floor.

  We'd taken a burnt out shell on a 5 year lease, put lots of sweat and some $ into repair, and as soon as finished found ourselves evicted.

  by ben masel on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 08:42:39 PM PDT

•  Ferraro's biggest gaffe

  Ferraro's biggest gaffe, to me, occurred just after 2000 election, when she suggested during a televised interview that Bill Clinton should just stay president for a few months while the country sorted things out.  What was wrong with this idea?

  It would have been completely unconstitutional.  The US system isn't perfect, as we know, but one of its great innovations is fixed terms for presidents (we know the exact moment a presidential term ends, Jan 20 at 12 noon, there are no extensions).

  It amazed me that someone who had run for the office of Vice President didn't seem to know this.  It's such a basic part of our system.

  by ClaudiusTheGod on Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 09:03:15 PM PDT