Which comment is worse? Hillary's or Bernie's?

[Onlooker]

My opinion is that both are equally bad, but not reflective of either candidate, and the attention both comments got are really just "gotcha" politics. To their credit, both Bernie and Hillary offered apologies of sorts.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-clarifies-ghetto-remark-that-prompted-social-media-outcry/

In Sunday night’s debate in Flint, Mich., the Vermont senator was asked to identify his “racial blind spots.”

Mr. Sanders answered, “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.”

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/hillary-clinton-nancy-reagen-aids-inexplicable

The other point that I wanted to make too is, it may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation when before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it. And that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low-key advocacy. But it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say, "Hey, we have to do something about this too."

[Buzz Clik]

1. Clinton apologized for her comment. Sanders doubled down.

So, I'd say Clinton's comment was worse initially but softened by her apology.

That leaves Sanders stubbornly standing behind his comment.

[JTFrog]

2. +1 n/t

[earthside]

4. Except that Hillary's is a misstatement of facts.

She can apologize but she was also just flat wrong; i.e., she got caught.

Frankly, I don't have any problem with what Bernie said.

[JTFrog]

12. Of course you don't.

But I bet you have no problem pointing out other's cognitive dissonance.

[Buzz Clik]

17. Sanders was a bit tone deaf. Clinton was mistaken. Clinton apologized; Sanders marched on.

[mythology]

19. So there are no poor white people?

Both are factually incorrect. That said I can't really get worked up over either. Sometimes people say things that are incorrect. I don't think either meant to cause harm or be malicious.

[tblue]

13. Before you condemn, at least know Bernie's entire quote:

[Buzz Clik]

16. I didn't condemn anything. I simply answered the question in the OP.

[Number23]

41. The quote in the post you're responding to was doctored. It's not what he said

He said, no, I don’t get cabs in Washington, D.C. This was 20 years ago. Because he was humiliated by the fact that cabdrivers would go past him because he was black. I couldn’t believe, you know, you just sit there and you say, this man did not take a cab 20 years ago in Washington, D.C. Tell you another story, I was with young people active in the Black Lives Matter movement. A young lady comes up to me and she says, you don’t understand what police do in certain black communities. You don’t understand the degree to which we are terrorized, and I’m not just talking about the horrible shootings that we have seen, which have got to end and we’ve got to hold police officers accountable, I’m just talking about every day activities where police officers are bullying people.

So to answer your question, I would say, and I think it’s similar to what the secretary said, when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/us/politics/transcript-democratic-presidential-debate.html

The quote in that post conveniently left out the "I would say" part and is breaking its neck trying to pretend that everything that was said was a quote from someone else when that is clearly not the case when you look at the entire quote.

[Lizzie Poppet]

18. Precisely. When you read more than the Fox News truncated version, it's completely different.

Bernie was quoting an African American person, not making the statement himself. Most of the criticism of Bernie about this is based on ignorance.

[renate]

37. this is the first time I've heard that he was quoting someone

That makes this a COMPLETE non-issue. Sheesh.

Thank you for that clarification. I doubt I'm the only person in America (possibly the only one on DU, though ) who hadn't heard that crucial detail.

[earthside]

23. Exactly!

Thank you for the entire quotation and providing the context.

[KPN]

26. +1000!

[noamnety]

28. OMFG

I'm a bernie supporter and didn't even know he was quoting a conversation.

Fuck the media, and everyone here who deliberately repeated that out of context and distorted it to smear him.

[Number23]

40. That's hysterical. Unfortunately the actual transcript paints an entirely different picture

Your quote quite conveniently takes out the "to answer your question" and the monumental "I WOULD SAY" which clearly puts the quote back on Sanders:

He said, no, I don’t get cabs in Washington, D.C. This was 20 years ago. Because he was humiliated by the fact that cabdrivers would go past him because he was black. I couldn’t believe, you know, you just sit there and you say, this man did not take a cab 20 years ago in Washington, D.C. Tell you another story, I was with young people active in the Black Lives Matter movement. A young lady comes up to me and she says, you don’t understand what police do in certain black communities. You don’t understand the degree to which we are terrorized, and I’m not just talking about the horrible shootings that we have seen, which have got to end and we’ve got to hold police officers accountable, I’m just talking about every day activities where police officers are bullying people.

So to answer your question, I would say, and I think it’s similar to what the secretary said, when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/us/politics/transcript-democratic-presidential-debate.html

[KPN]

24. What bothers me is how many times Hillary apologizes.

How many times have we heard her say something to the effect of "I was wrong on that. And I take responsibility for that." Seems to me like just about every time she gets called on the carpet for something she said. If it happened once or twice, fine ... give her the benefit of the doubt -- but she does it too often for it to be genuine in my view.

[Buzz Clik]

25. Yeah, that's troubling alright.

[stevenleser]

31. If you think apologies are bad, you might be in the wrong place.

Democrats apologize when they do something wrong. Republicans are the ones who refuse to apologize for their mistakes.

[merrily]

32. Why should Bernie apologize for quoting someone from BLM?

[KPN]

44. There is that.

But I'm in the right place -- for now. But you missed my point. I don't take issue with sincere apologies when called for, but apologizing as a modus oiperandi lacks sincerity in my mind -- and HRC is coming close to fitting that mo.

[Number23]

39. Nailed it.

[bigwillq]

3. Bernie still seems uncomfortable dealing with and confronting race issues

He has much work to do on this issue. I think his intent is good, but his delivery is not.

[Marr]

5. God, you guys are desperate to minimize Clinton's offensive remarks.

Hillary told a flat out lie in the service of rehabilitating one of the patron saints of the right. Her lie showed a casual disregard for gays; a group for whom she's offered only the most pandering, when-convenient-for-her-only support in the past.

Sorry.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. The difference is obvious.

[tblue]

15. Pandering for Repub votes & throwing HIV+ under the bus

Bernie was quoting a young AA woman:

[Onlooker]

35. So Bernie plagiarized, too?

Supposedly Hillary Clinton was making a claim based on comments from Nancy Reagan's son, but that still doesn't excuse it.

At any rate, it's a shame that Bernie actually plagiarized someone from BLM in an effort to pander. I didn't know that, but surely not crediting his source makes his comment even worse.

[Fumesucker]

38. When you attribute the source it's not plagiarism

Plagiarism is all about concealing sources.

[Number23]

42. Please see post #40 in this thread. There was no misattributed quote. That "white people don't know

what it's like to be poor" came directly from Sanders.

[Arkansas Granny]

7. I'm not going to condemn either candidate for those remarks.

I would like to add, however, that I think Reagan got credit for doing something about AIDS because of the work of C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General during Reagan's time in office.

Without Koop, the Reagan Administration famously did nothing to address the AIDS epidemic. Koop would later write that: “Our first public health priority, to stop the further transmission of the AIDS virus, became needlessly mired in the homosexual politics of the early 1980s. We lost a great deal of precious time because of this, and I suspect we lost some lives as well.” Then, in 1986, Reagan asked his Surgeon General to prepare a report about AIDS.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/02/28/c-everett-koop-the-surgeon-general-who-put-science-before-personal-ideology/

I don't know how many of you remember, but back in the late 80's, a letter explaining what was known about AIDS was sent to every mailbox in the US. Reagan was praised for this at the time, even though he had dragged his feet about even acknowledging the problem for years.

[NWCorona]

21. Coop criticized Reagan for his slow response to the AIDS epidemic

[tblue]

8. Bernie was QUOTING an AA woman!

Here's is what he said in entirety:

https://twitter.com/noreallyhowcome/status/707450697659359232

[Betty Karlson]

9. Clinton's.

[cherokeeprogressive]

10. Hillary's

[99Forever]

11. One is a flat out despicable lie, the other a nuanced POV.

Spin it any fucking way you please, a lie is a lie is a lie.

[HassleCat]

14. Sanders was basically correct.

They have been going after him because it's not literally true, because there are white people who are poor and get hassled by the cops. But his remark reflects a basic truth about our society. For the most part, white people don't know what it's like to live like that, and they certainly don't know what it's like to be treated a certain way because of skin color.

Clinton thought her remark would fall under the blanket excuse allowed for saying something nice about recently departed persons of importance. You're allowed to fib a little, but not allowed to tell an outrageous whopper that offends a whole segment of our society. oops! She needs to publicly say it was wrong, and admit she was lying to be nice. People will understand that.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"According to the most-recent statistics, North Lawndale is now on the wrong end of virtually every socioeconomic indicator. In 1930 its population was 112,000. Today it is 36,000. The halcyon talk of “interracial living” is dead. The neighborhood is 92 percent black. Its homicide rate is 45 per 100,000—triple the rate of the city as a whole. The infant-mortality rate is 14 per 1,000—more than twice the national average. Forty-three percent of the people in North Lawndale live below the poverty line—double Chicago’s overall rate. Forty-five percent of all households are on food stamps—nearly three times the rate of the city at large. Sears, Roebuck left the neighborhood in 1987, taking 1,800 jobs with it. Kids in North Lawndale need not be confused about their prospects: Cook County’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center sits directly adjacent to the neighborhood.

North Lawndale is an extreme portrait of the trends that ail black Chicago. Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city. The average per capita income of Chicago’s white neighborhoods is almost three times that of its black neighborhoods. When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park) had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate (Clearing). “This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons,” Sampson writes. “A difference of kind, not degree.

In other words, Chicago’s impoverished black neighborhoods—characterized by high unemployment and households headed by single parents—are not simply poor; they are “ecologically distinct.” This “is not simply the same thing as low economic status,” writes Sampson. “In this pattern Chicago is not alone.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Basically what Bernie said.

On the other hand, LGBT do not claim the Reagans were courageous leaders on AIDS, we call them monsters.

[Bluenorthwest]

22. Onlooker posted some bait. Then he ran away to hide.

nt

[merrily]

27. The question was about Sanders' own racial blind spots. He quoted what a rep of BLM said to him.

You're saying he failed to identify his own racial blind spots accurately? Interesting theory.

I wonder what a "correct" answer to that loaded question would have been, one that no one could have pulled apart to use against him.

What was Hillary's impeccable answer to that same question? That using race as a wedge issue in two different primary campaigns against two different fellow Democrats may not be cool?

Speaking of loaded questions, you still have not explained your own loaded question, namely, "Which was worse?" What exactly was it about Sanders' reply that warranted including it in you OP?

[revbones]

29. Sanders was quoting someone.

Sheesh.

[TheFarseer]

30. Bernie was quoting someone

Maybe you think he's a clueless idiot but when he's quoting a black person, it's hard to say the statement is clueless. I see absolutely nothing wrong with his statement and have a hard time seeing why anyone else does since it is a quote! Hillary's statement is just plain not true. It's not particularly offensive to me but I can see how it is to people affected by AIDS.

[Chitown Kev]

33. Neither. Both.

[Kalidurga]

34. This isn't helping Hillary in the slightest.

Try coming up with a blatant lie told by Bernie that completely misrepresents a situation perpetuated by callous right wingers.

[Aerows]

36. You are *seriously* comparing the two

and holding them up for observation?

*shut up Aerows* *shut up, you will get banned*

[Number23]

43. In between the upset over Hillary's quote, a slew of Sanders supporters raced to rec a thread where

a raving, adulterous and PROUD homophobe endorsed the Senator.

You truly cannot make this stuff up.