On Jan 15, 3:45=A0pm, Stevie Nichts <nix2nic...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html
>
> Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity
> politics. A Clinton victory wouldn't just be a victory for one
> woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama
> victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream
> alive, and so on.
>
> Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement
> Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were
> constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white
> male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male
> establishment. They are facing each other.
>
> All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity
> politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama
> campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the
> victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They
> are both deliberately misinterpreting each other's comments in
> order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde.
>
> All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against
> critics of affirmative action, like Ward Connerly and Thomas
> Sowell, and critics of the radical feminism, like Christina Hoff
> Summers, are now being turned inward by the Democratic front-
> runners.
>
> ...What we have here is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel: the bonfire of
> the multicultural vanities.
> ---
>
> It was bound to happen eventually. Someone pass the marshmallows.
Unfortunately, there's a grain of truth in this.
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