Thursday 4 December 2008

Bill Richardson

Barack Obama’ blackness poses no challenge to Middle America. It derives from an entirely foreign and conveniently dead father whom he barely know, and it is accordingly embodied in an exotic name.

Rahm Emanuel’s Jewishness is being sold in such a way as to pose no challenge to Middle America, either. All the emphasis is on his Israeli immigrant father, rather than on his mother, a Jewish-American in the ordinary sense, and, moreover, a veteran Chicago Civil Rights activist.

And now, along comes Bill Richardson. Obama is black, but he is not slave-descended and he has no history in Civil Rights. Emanuel is Jewish, but any possibility of being related to, say, Howard Stern is being distinctly downplayed. And Richardson is Hispanic. But his name is William Richardson. So, again, no challenge to Middle America there.

Well, not in that sense, at least.

Not because he is Hispanic, but simply because of his record as Governor of New Mexico and in the Clinton Administration, with Richardson at Commerce, what chance Obama’s promise to “renegotiate” exportation of American jobs and the importation of the competition in person?

2 comments:

  1. Rahm Emmanuel's father was in the Irgun. He was member of the terrorist group that bombed the King David Hotel in July 1946, murdering 91 people.

    Obama is doing more than just "palling around" with former terrorists - not to mention feebly unsuccessful ones like Bill Ayers. What's interesting is that this little detail about the new White House Chief Staff's ancestry has received precisely no attention in Britain whatsoever.

    Now I wonder why that might be? (Could there there be any parallel with the way Obama's father's involvement with the Mau Mau in Kenya has been carefully ignored - not to mention the man's almost total contempt for Britain?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. His main "anti-British" act pending is to sign into law the Bill making English libel judgements unenforceable in the US. Actually, that is a good thing. But it is also an excuse to repeal one-sided extradition treaties in "retaliation".

    ReplyDelete