Something New
Obama’s Campaign has a major fuck-up. The key to understanding the Senator from Punjab line is in Rich’s comments and posts:
Whoever ordered this racist/xenophobic hit on Clinton needs to be fired. Right away. And I don’t mean the person who wrote it. From what I understand, the first draft was much more acceptable, but it was rejected and sent back with a demand that it be infinitely tougher. If the author is fired and the person who ordered the rewrite is not, then Obama is a huge hypocrite. The full memo is here.
There is certainly no record of over-the-top racial or xenophobic smears by Obama himself, but there is with at least one guy on his staff, who my sources say was the one who rejected the original Punjab piece and then ordered it massively toughened up.
More here, here and here. That ought to take care of your Macaca qualms. If they had called her “Hillary (D-Harlem)” or “Hillary (D-Chinatown)” it would have been no different, regardless of any mild throwaway joke she might have made about herself. The fact that Punjab has been used as an ethnic/racial slur just makes it worse, regardless of the intent.
Rich seems to be saying it was Robert Gibbs. I hope not. I like Robert and he’s generally a good guy, though he does get a bit too harsh in races. However, assuming Rich has his reporting correct, and he usually does, the piece was sent back to toughen it up and Rich seems to be pointing that it was Gibbs who ordered that. Regardless of who did, the person who did needs to be fired. It’s not what the Obama campaign is supposed to be about.
June 19th, 2007 at
Arch,
I still fail to see how any of the three links Rich posted about Robert Gibbs indicate a “record of over-the-top racial or xenophobic smears”.
Smears? Yes. But even the 2003 attack ad against Dean (with bin Laden) wasn’t racist in tone. It was a smear against a governor who had as much foreign policy experience as the 43rd President did before he took office (for better or worse).
In all this, I agree the tone of this particular not-for-attribution attack is outside Sen. Obama’s stated goals for his campaign. If there is a “major fuck-up” here, that’s it. But the substance and subject matter are ripe for discussion without having to quote from Sen. Clinton’s ally’s nebulous charges of ‘racism’.
June 19th, 2007 at
D-Punjab
It’s time to call bullshit on the idea that Obama’s folks came up with this as a smear. It was quoting Hillary herself:
http://www.sikhcouncilusa.org/article.aspx?article=evtdinner
Washington May 18th – “I am delighted to be the Senator from Punjab as well as from New York” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the former first lady of the United States of America.