Maureen Dowd — Black Girls Can’t Govern?
from Marie Burns at New York Times Examiner: http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/11/black-girls-cant-govern-maureen-dowd/
Dowd writes that Rice should have thrown caution to the wind: Rice should have been more of “a-bull-in-a-china-shop” and “vetted her talking points.” And, oh yeah, Rice should not have listened to “her pal Valerie Jarrett and other staffers zealous about casting the president in a more flattering light.” What is Dowd’s evidence for Jarrett’s interference? Nothing. In fact, according to national security advisor Ben Rhodes, “The only edit (of the talking points Rice received) … made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility.” Rhodes said the White House changed references to the diplomatic facility in Benghazi as a consulate “because the consulate in Benghazi was not formally a consulate.” Somehow I don’t think Valerie Jarrett or other “zealous staffers” care exactly what the U.S.’s Benghazi facility was called. Whatever name one attaches to it neither enhances nor detracts from the President’s image. Pulling Valerie Jarrett into the mix is just nonsense. We have to wonder why Dowd did it.
Maybe it’s just me. I find it curious and more than a bit disconcerting that Dowd reserves almost all of her criticism for accomplished black women. The only man she criticizes is President Obama (hey, he’s black, too!), and she frames that criticism in layers of sexual innuendo. Obama showed “virile flare” in defending Rice against McCain’s attacks, Dowd writes. He went “mano a mano” with McCain. The President was “protecting a diplomatic damsel in distress.” We are supposed to see Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett as “All the President’s Girls.” Dowd presents even the relationship between Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice in sexual terms: Condi “jilted” Brent. Black ladies may defend their man, but they don’t mind dumping on old white boys. This is a sexist, racist construction the Party of White People surely appreciates.
Meanwhile, Dowd masks and bolsters the Republicans’ unfounded accusations. If Dowd thinks the intelligence community was too cautious in its initial assessment, or too opaque in its early releases to the public, why doesn’t she say so? Instead of faulting the authors of the talking points – you know, older white guys like former CIA director David Petraeus and NSA Director James Clapper – she fingers the spokeswoman. Just like John McCain & Lindsey Graham, Dowd blames the messenger. And just like McCain and Graham, Dowd relies on phony assertions to do so. Indeed, Dowd cannot criticize McCain and Graham because she’s fishing in the same cesspool of half-truths and innuendo favored by the Old White Boys’ Resentment Club. Not surprisingly, Dowd catches the same variety of sexist, racist carp the GOP anglers so commonly nab bare-handed.
In her pushback against Republican charges against Susan Rice, Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), the chairwoman-elect of the Congressional Black Caucus said, “All of the things they have disliked about things that have gone on in the administration, they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy. There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by unfortunately Sen. McCain and others.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Republican attack on Rice “is almost as if the attempt is to assassinate her character.”
One might be inclined to say the same about Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column today. Dowd’s criticism of Rice and Jarrett, in particular, is so off-base, I have to wonder why she’s made it . . .
read more: http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/11/black-girls-cant-govern-maureen-dowd/
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