The Pennsylvania Democratic Primary is not, despite how Hillary Clinton would have it portrayed in the media, a national referendum. It is not a general election. It is one more state on the way to the Democratic Party nomination and it would be disingenuous of anyone to characterize a win for Clinton in Pennsylvania as any greater an accomplishment than the highly-anticipated victories of Obama in Hawaii or Romney in Michigan - all are de facto home states.
Recently, Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell, a sincerely unattractive man straight from The Soprano's New Jersey muscle central casting, inferred that some white Pennsylvania folks could not consider voting for Barack Obama, because he is black. Rendell would know. He has certainly benefited from racial mistrust fostered in his state.
Anyway. A couple of years ago, Wife X, was toiling away as an independent designer, when her executive recruitment person called and asked would she consider a design position with a Pennsylvania company... If you're in the kitchen or bathroom of your cheaply refurbished rental apartment and you look down beneath your feet, at that tawdry piece of linoleum tile... there's a clue to who there. Wife X is an award winning textile designer fancied getting towards the East Coast somewhat. Did a little research... hmmm, Pennsylvania, premier league material for Hate Crimes. Surely though, we said, there would be no Hate towards an affable European mixed race couple? Everything would be okay. And off she flew.
Well I guess the recruiter had forgotten to mention or wasn't legally able to mention to the company that Wife X is black. At the company design department there was less racial diversity than in Echo Park. Seriously.
So, despite an incredible design portfolio, this remains the only time she has not received a job offer based on, I quote, "Not being a good cultural fit." Is that ambiguous? Or is it more...unambiguous?
Currently, she is a textile designer at a company in California, well let me clue you in, if you're in an expensively refurbished office and the interior designer person sought out sustainable fabrics and fiber, and you look down beneath your feet - you may even be standing on one of Wife X's designs.
Meanwhile, Clinton lackey and lifelong racial profiler, Geraldine Ferraro, spent a week yapping about how lucky Barack is to be black otherwise he'd be out of there, despite I suppose winning more states and delegates and more votes and being simply the most inspiring candidate Republicans, Independents or Democrats have seen in years and being the living embodiment of the American Dream, and all of the other things he has been 'lucky' enough to do along the way. Then he gets accused of playing the race card for having the nous to gently fend her off. For pushing back. Well. I suppose at least she doesn't prefix her sentences with "I'm not a racist but..." oh you so know what's coming next when you hear that. Successful black people are always 'just lucky' I guess. Just luckier than the less successful ones to be black. Perhaps someone should tell her that the GOP has sole possession of the Southern Strategy these days.
Hillary, Ferraro etal, look a lot like the flabbergasted old guard, clinging to the last glaciers of a frozen polarised world, the Desperate Party apparatchiks exposed as anachronisms of the Obama-age. Doubtless, prior to the Pennsylvania primary, we'll see more attempts to characterize Obama as the all-black candidate. Not the All-American he is. These attempts at marginalization will come from the people whose entire political lives have relied on the trust of the black community to eke out their slender electoral majorities. Charles Barkley wrote so succinctly about asking hisAfrican American friends just what they got for their loyalty to the democratic party over the years... Perhaps now his friends will be able to answer him more readily.
If Hillary wasn't a woman, as far as I'm aware, (she did have Bill thinking they were doing that pandrogeny thing for a while), if she wasn't a former first lady, with 11 straight defeats in a row, a 3-17 recent record, she'd be the one gone by now.
This owes a lot to all I have absorbed from the relentless back and forth with my friend Walt Disney, from the TV people and Internet places. So don't even bother to stop me if you've heard it all before.
