Ferraro Angry At Being Compared To Wright

The latest from Mrs. Ferraro via the plucky (LA area) Daily Breeze:

Obama’s comparison irks Ferraro

By Gene Maddaus, Staff Writer
03/19/2008

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said Wednesday that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday…

“To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable,” Ferraro said. “He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred.” …

“On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wild- and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap,” Obama said.

“On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation and that rightly offend white and black alike.”

Ferraro said she had “no clue” why Obama would include her in his speech and said Obama’s association with Wright raises serious questions about his judgment.

“What this man is doing is he is spewing that stuff out to young people, and to younger people than Obama, and putting it in their heads that it’s OK to say ‘Goddamn America’ and it’s OK to beat up on white people,” she said. “You don’t preach that from the pulpit.”

Ferraro also said she could not understand why Obama had called out his own white grandmother for using racial stereotypes that had made him cringe.

“I could not believe that,” she said. “That’s my mother’s generation.”

Obama returned to Ferraro’s remarks later in his speech, again drawing a comparison between her and Wright.

“We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro in the aftermath of her recent statements as harboring some deep-seated bias,” Obama said…

Obama appeared to allude to Ferraro once more when he said that it would be wrong to “pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card.”

It was Obama’s campaign that drew the most attention to Ferraro’s remark last week and suggested it fit with a pattern of racial comments by Clinton surrogates.

“That’s exactly what he did,” Ferraro said. “It was their campaign that started this.”

In sum, however, Ferraro said she thought the speech was “excellent,” and said she understood why Obama could not renounce his association with Wright.

“I think they got as far as they could go politically,” she said. “They’re looking at their base. Their base is African-Americans. They’re looking at that and they’re trying to walk a very thin line. They don’t want to offend the African-Americans, and this is the way he did it.”

She’s right, you know.

Just as she was largely accurate in her first remarks, as Mr. Obama himself has even stated.

From a June 2005 article from the Chicago Tribune, which is (at the moment) still proudly displayed on the Obama campaign’s website:

When it comes to race, Obama makes his point–with subtlety

Sunday, June 26, 2005

By Jeff Zeleny

Obama acknowledges, with no small irony, that he benefits from his race.

If he were white, he once bluntly noted, he would simply be one of nine freshmen senators, almost certainly without a multimillion-dollar book deal and a shred of celebrity. Or would he have been elected at all?

So why all the fuss?

And how does speaking the truth make one like Jeremiah Wright?

Related Articles:

• Hillary War Room: Obama - Liar, Hypocrite
• Obama: Wright Not Racist, But Grandmom Is
• Obama Defends Rev Wright's Damnable Lies
• Ferraro Defends Remarks, Quits Campaign
• Geraldine Ferarro: Obama's Lucky He's Black