Whenever I think that the hotheads around here have gotten an unfortunate, if temporary upper-hand, and especially when I myself commit the sin of hotheadedness and emotional outrage, I always mosey on over to TPM to see what the ever-analytical, cool-as-a-cucumber Josh Marshall has to say.
Well tonight, the Gerry Ferraro flap got my Irish up to the point of being able to boil my own potatoes on the vitriol that was coming out of my mouth and fingers: Yet another political/feminist heroine from my youth was revealing her "mind of clay".
Needing a good calm-down, I headed over to TPM for my dose of "non-prescription Valium". Josh not only calmed me down, he scored a deadly blow against the race- and gender-baiters.
In his usual style, he gets analytical when others lose their heads:
Now, I'm really not much for the sport of competitive outrage that's flying over all of our heads of late. So I'm just going to set aside whether the comment is offensive or outrageous. Let's just consider whether it's accurate.
He then goes on to knock down the fallacy of the "blacks only vote for blacks and that's why Obama's winning" explanation of Obama's success :
There's no doubt that Obama's race is the central factor in allowing him to consolidate almost unanimous support from African-American voters, especially in the South. But African-Americans make up only about 13% of the population. And does anyone doubt that that advantage he gains there is not balanced at least to a substantial degree by resistance to voting for him among white voters?
Josh is right. And he is too even-handed to say that Clinton surrogates and supporters who are pushing this one sided, blinkered argument that dismisses or ignores racism among white Democrats who support Hillary are guilty of a certain kind of situational racism themselves.
Josh is no partisan. He next credits Clinton with having to counter a similar tide of misogyny:
"Most of the same points could be made about the advantages and disadvantages Sen. Clinton is under because of her gender. " .... [W]e'd be foolish not to realize that some of Obama's big margins among white men are not simply a reflection of support for Obama."
Those of us who support Obama can be as much to blame when we belittle Clinton merely because she's a woman. Personally I'm not a fan of the "when a woman cries, she's being manipulative" crap I've heard here. I'd like the idiots who believe that to listen to the Testosterone episode of This American Life.
And Josh ends it beautifully:
You might support Obama or not, think he's qualified or an empty suit but suggesting he's only where he is now because he's black is something much worse than outrageous. It just seems obviously false.
What more can I say?