Geraldine Ferraro, in a blast from the past, became the latest Clinton campaign official to shoot off their mouth about Barack Obama and then desperately attempt to deflect the underlying intent of her remarks by reinforcing the very thing she said she didn’t do. Sound complicated, well it is.
Remember Ferraro, the VP candidate with running mate Walter Mondale who lost every state but Mondale's home in Minnesota in a landslide when running against Ronald Reagan in 1984? Mrs. Ferraro made it a point to point out to Diane Sawyer in a Good Morning America interview today that she is now a highly successful person and paid to give speeches, yes paid to give speeches.
Do we really care? Does that mean she did or didn’t mean what she said, just because she got paid? According to the International Speakers.com Ferraro gets paid between $20,000-30,000 for speeches like this. Perhaps the Obama controversy was a way to hype the speech coverage to justify the cost? Ferraro was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights during the Clinton administration thus her loyalty to the Clintons.
On Good Morning America she apologized again this morning to those who thought it racially insensitive for her to suggest that Barack Obama wouldn't be the Democratic front-runner if he were not black. But she also declared: "It wasn't a racist comment. It was a statement of fact."
During a hostile and aggressive interview with Sawyer she also bashed the Obama campaign for criticizing her, saying that "every time" someone makes a negative comment about Obama, they are accused of racism.
Last Tuesday night she had even stronger words for the Daily Breeze, the newspaper in Torrance, Calif., whose interview with her last Friday started the whole mess. "Racism works in two different directions," she said. "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
The Obama campaign has called on Clinton, who has distanced herself from Ferraro's comments, to remove her from her finance committee. But that hasn't happened yet. A defiant Ferraro said today she would step down from the committee if asked, but would not stop raising money for Clinton.
Her exact words in the original Daily Breeze article dated 3/7/2008:
Geraldine Ferraro lets her emotions do the talking
By Jim Farber Staff Writer
When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro's comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.
"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.
"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."
As our conversation came to an end, Ferraro said of her upcoming talk in Torrance, "It's going to be very up to date. It's going to be my version of the inside story."
Ferraro aside, it is a good thing perceptions aren't implied by pictures alone in this Democratic slugfest. Pictures can be misleading. Oh my gosh, is that Bill and Hillary dressed as African Americans?
You don't suppose they are Muslim too?
