First Lady

Rather than pulling Mrs. Obama behind a curtain, her husband’s campaign is pushing her farther out on stage. She remains a charismatic presence, and when she gives her husband a fist dap or talks of him as a father, she is telling voters, this is a regular guy. This South Side woman anchors him in her reality.

I thought this was an interesting profile of our next First Lady - Michelle Obama Looks for a New Introduction

The Echo Chamber Keeps Churning Out the Stupid

I ran across a Los Angeles Times blog post about the bullshit forwards we've all seen about Obama - you know, the ones you have to delete when you realize what they are so that anger doesn't cause you to put a brick through your monitor (or maybe I just need a little anger management.

Barack Obama vs. the Internet rumor machine

I think that the type of people who would buy into/be swayed by this shocking level of ignorance a) probably wouldn't vote for an African American*;
b) probably wouldn't ever vote for a Dem; c) probably watch Fox "News" so they most likely wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face. Did I mention shallow gene pools? I'm just sayin...

However, I have a hard time letting bullshit get by without at least attempting to set the record straight. Last month Mary Mancini posted a handy response to such e-mails (I've even seen them as Myspace bulletin posts) at Liberadio(!). I've bookmarked it and have found myself almost wanting to get another of those forwards - in spite of the can of worms it might open up:

It’s Time for The Busy to Stop and Take the Time to Fight The Crazy.

The Times article also had a link to a section of Obama's sight set up specifically to counter this type of misinformation:

factcheck.barackobama.com

*Tatie, my favorite editor, was I supposed to hyphenate that? I can never remember.

Republicans: Not Warm and/or Fuzzy

A couple of months ago Jack Cafferty cited an article (I can't remember what publication, and I'm not really having any luck googling it***) that basically stated that the Republican nominee would have a hard time getting tough if Obama ended up being the Democratic nominee because they were going to have to really be careful not to say things that would be perceived as being racist. Republicans are not historically known for being warm and fuzzy toward other races or civil rights, so I think there's a good point to be found there.

I don't like that this country hasn't progressed enough for race not even to be a factor, but I'm also not bothered that Republicans/McCain may either a) have to tread lightly against my guy or b) fuck up and say the wrong thing (I think McCain will be extra careful not to do it, but I see it as highly likely that people within the party will end up making huge missteps - whether intentional or not - as far as things that aren't ok to say . . . like I said, not exactly warm and fuzzy with people who look differently/love differently/feel differently/believe differently) if it's going to help those swing voters turn blue.

I found an article today that went into this a bit:

Race issue may prove tricky for McCain campaign

***UPDATED 8:09 p.m.***

I found it! Cafferty paraphrased:

The Republicans are the party of Macaca and Katrina and race relations aren't their long suit. And it could prove awkward for them to get aggressive in a campaign against a black candidate.

The op-ed piece, "Who's Afraid of Barack Obama?" by Frank Rich ran in The New York Times back in December.

It really only touched on the above point I was trying to make, but still...