I haven't commented on Geraldine Ferraro's really ignorant comment about Barack Obama because I figured it was covered pretty well. Also, like Eliot Spitzer, she's gone now so we shouldn't heap hot coals upon her head, as it were. Yet I read with interest and gratification Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite's commentary. To imagine that Obama's only virtue is his race, rendering his ideas, his energy, his passion as irrelevant to his success - this is a right-wing talking point being mouthed by the last person one would think would echo the worst of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
I still have my pin from the 1984 election with Ferraro's face on it. I will keep it, because I want to have good memories of Ms. Ferraro; having this as her last serious public statement on matters political is kind of sad. Considering 1984 was also the year George Wallace apologized for his "segregation forever" comment and sought to make serious amends with the African-American community in Alabama for the harm he did gives her statement a bit of irony in my eyes. She actually moved in the opposite direction from that other Democratic politician. That she is oblivious to the racist undertone to her own words - the mind boggles.
Read Brooks Thistlethwaite, and you will feel better. I did.
