Daily Archive

CNN:

Barack Obama’s chief strategist said Tuesday that a comment by one of Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers that Barack Obama would not be a major presidential contender if he were not black – coupled with Clinton’s “own inexplicable unwillingness” to deny that he was a Muslim during a recent interview – indicated “an insidious pattern that needs to be addressed.”

David Axelrod called on the New York senator to drop former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro from her finance committee. “When you wink and nod at offensive statements you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” said Axelrod…

Actually, Ms Ferraro probably didn’t go far enough. For it is almost painfully self-evident to anyone who has viewed this Democratic party nomination process in any way objectively, that a white male politician espousing exactly the same often half-baked platitudes as Sen Obama, would have long ago been eliminated from serious nomination contention. So why is he still around?

Draw your own conclusions. Ms Ferraro has drawn hers. Apparently she doesn’t have a right to do so, but Ms Ferraro is now reported to have responded:

…”Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says, ‘Let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world,’ you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California…

And it might well be said that Ms Ferraro knows a bit about why one is where one happens to be. She — at the time a little-known nationally member of the House, remember — was the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee. And why? Primarily because she was an acceptable woman, and most everyone realized that. Even then Rep Ferraro, who just reminded us:

…”I said in large measure, because he is black. I said, Let me also say in 1984 — and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times — in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president,”…

Clearly, though, her now nearly 24 years on pointing out the blindingly obvious has hit the Obama campaign in a sensitive place. Hence Mr Axelrod’s awkward attempt to change the subject to the appropriateness of her “offensive” views, as well as Sen Clinton’s supposed unwillingness to vouch for Sen Obama’s religion. And since when is that latter an opponent’s job?

Rather than either, or both, being the main issue, what we actually have here is yet another tiresome and troubling example of how we have seeking the nation’s highest office, a man who is deigned to be somehow above stinging — or even what some deem “offensive” — criticism.

Indeed, what is said is supposed to be only praise to the highest heavens. Anything less is decreed as “divisive” — …”I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive,” [Sen Obama] told the Allentown Morning News… — but speaking only for myself of course, I refuse adamantly even to consider supporting any candidate for any office whom it is decreed I shouldn’t criticize, or perhaps even “offend”. One would hope most other Americans would feel similarly.

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UPDATE, March 13: Naturally, the Clinton campaign folded like a tent on this one, too. Deal with global issues? Sen Clinton evidently can’t even deal with Sen Obama.

As for the latter, he doesn’t need another pillow. He has more of them than he could ever hope to use already.

Reuters:

Schoolchildren should take part in a “coming of age” ceremony at the end of their studies to mark the transition to adult citizenship, former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said on Tuesday.

The ceremony could include, for example, an oath of allegiance to the Queen…

One suspects that this is just so much typical Labour blather. Still, this response is a bit overheated, and might even be considered a dig out of right field at Americans:

…Civil rights lawyer Baroness Kennedy told BBC radio she had groaned when she heard the proposals.

“I see this as an empty gesture. To ask 16-year-olds to troop into a hall and like Americans put their hands on their heart and take an oath of allegiance is risible.”…

And an ignorant dig at that. But first, it is perhaps worth noting that immigrants seeking British citizenship already have to participate in a “citizenship ceremony”, and it’s curious how that somehow is not decreed to be distasteful. Also whatever the problems American youth face, theirs are not primarily of national allegiance.

For despite what many like Baroness Kennedy seem to believe, the American “Pledge” was not a product of rightist “jingoism”. Its original version was, as U.S. history.org tells us, composed by a socialist:

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth’s Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.

In its original form it read:

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”…

But it became widely accepted and used in the U.S. as a consequence of 19th and early 20th century mass immigration, in a way to try to pull together disparate people under the U.S. flag. (It was slightly altered over time, in ways its composer would likely have not approved.) Britain today faces much the same issue. However, mass public professions of national fealty through a flag are not the British style.

Nor are the comparative immigration issues precisely the same. Just like British retiring to Spain, EU citizens settling in Britain from, say, Poland or Lithuania don’t need to become British citizens to remain here legally. And it’s hard to imagine many Muslim families allowing their children to take an oath of allegiance directly to a Christian queen. Some Roman Catholics might have sectarian issues with doing so as well. Indeed, even some Labourites less than enamored with Her Majesty would likely have trouble with it, too.

But, if not swearing an oath to the Queen, to what then? Even a “pledge” to the flag in the U.S. style would hardly work cleanly. After all, would Scots or Northern Irish (some of whom wouldn’t “pledge” allegiance to the Queen either, of course) swear allegiance to “the Union Jack” of the United Kingdom? When the current Scottish Executive is leading a rebellion every way possible against the union, and even flying the Union Jack over Northern Irish government buildings has been deemed contentious?

What can ever be agreed upon, if anything? It’s impossible to say. Yet presumably less risible to the Baroness than an oath of allegiance is for “British” youth instead to be given no positive directional affirmation whatsoever, and instead allow other “allegiances” to fill the moral void. And then, at some point in the future, many may well once more throw up their hands and undoubtedly cry out for an immediate explanation, “But why!?“