Friday 16 May 2008

A Strange and Portentous Article


There was a very weird article on the BBC website today, discussing Hillary Clinton's "exit strategy" from the Democratic candidate race. Go ahead, take a look. See if, when you get about halfway down, to the Bad Tidings sub-section, you find it as strange as I do.

I mean, what? Are we really living in a world where journalists are analysing Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race and seriously suggesting that she won't listen to senior democratic figures who are white males (Al Gore, Harry Reid) nor black males (James Clyburn) telling her to quit, but she might listen to white women about it? That really seems to be the inference we're supposed to draw: society in America (or, at least, society within the Democratic party) is now so stratified that women won't even listen to men for advice any more and white people won't listen to black people.

This is a white woman

It's... I'm not sure what the word is, but it's definitely something. My suspicion is that political journalists have become so used to analysing Clinton's support in terms of white women and Obama's in terms of African-Americans that they've managed to enter a sort of collective alternate reality where such things really are important. I can't seriously imagine that it really is the case that Hillary Clinton would only accept being told to quit if it came from a white woman. I refuse to believe that anybody would take such things even subconsciously into consideration, and I find it worrying that journalists are entertaining the notion that they might.

These are not white women

Journalists are silly people, you know. They really are. The more news I read, the more often I come to this conclusion.

3 comments:

NathanRyder said...

Did the article definitely say that she wouldn't listen to black women? Is an intervention by Oprah definitely off the cards?

noisms said...

To be fair, it mentioned white men and African-American men...so possibly Oprah could step in. I'm guess Ricky Lake would be better though, because she's both white and a woman.

Bilbo said...

I find it amazing that Ms Clinton is still hanging on and trying to convince everyone she's a better candidate. She may or may not be, but at this point, her only hope is to trash Mr Obama's character and electability, and if she does that she will completely and totally alienate all the black voters (99% of whom will vote for Obama, anyhow)...this will torpedo any chance of her (or her husband) playing a role in Democratic politics before the next Ice Age. As you know from my blog, I don't like either Mr Obama or Ms Clinton...or Mr McCain, for that matter. But Ms Clinton is just spoiling things for the Democrats by dragging things out. Stupid.