Let's hear it for Uppity Women and Black Men!

[EffieBlack]

It's interesting that both Hillary and Barack have been criticized for not having enough experience - for running for president without "paying their dues." Of course, what is really meant is that they don't have the "right" experience, i.e., long years in the Senate or a Governorship. But - oh, how convenient - until very recently, those kinds of jobs have been controlled almost exclusively by white men.

Although they were clearly brilliant, hard-working, accomplished (she the Wellesley commencement speaker and outstanding law student and he president of the Harvard Law Review), neither Hillary nor Obama had the same choices as white men when they started on their career paths. Sure, they could have run for office, but the odds were long against them being successful at the time. So they each followed paths that enabled them to serve.

On the other hand, we have people like George W. Bush, lazy, uncurious, unaccomplished men, who screwed up and drank away the first 40 years of their lives, but STILL get to run for president with hardly a blink. Can you imagine what Obama's chances would be today for even getting a decent-paying job, much less holding public office, if he had spent the first half of HIS life drinking, drugging and failing at everything he tried? Even if he'd made only one wrong turn, he'd very likely be relegated to the same trash heap onto which our society throws so many talented promising black men who made just ONE mistake.

With the standard trajectory available to so many white men, regardless of class or economic background, a mere longshot for them, Hillary and Barack both put their talents to use in a way they believed would best serve their communities. They both excelled and eventually ran for the Senate and won, squeezing themselves into the "good old boy" club from which most of their sisters and brothers are excluded.

Only to be told that "You've never been a governor. You've only been a senator for 4 or 8 years. You need to get back to the end of the line and wait your turn while the rest of us - who skipped the line in the first place - run to our hearts' content. Just wait your turn."

I'm so proud of both of them for standing up to this and for doing so well.

My hats off to both of you, my Uppity Sister and Brother!

[emilyg]

1. Cheers!

[bigtree]

2. heh

I like it. :toast:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. Hear hear! Uppity women and black guys! Let's hear it for DEMS in the White House! nt

[VolcanoJen]

4. A to the men!!!

AMEN!!!

[EffieBlack]

5. :-)

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Thank you! K&R!

[rosesaylavee]

7. Yes!

We need to remember how amazing it is to have our choices be a woman or a black man. Finally! I didn't think I would see either in my lifetime.

[mojowork_n]

8. Absolutely

And a pox on Dick Morris (and now, just minutes ago on MSNBC, Pat Buchanon) for using the old dixiecrat abacus, to calculate their southern vote projections.

And two or three dripping, itchey poxes for all the Republican noise makers talking about 'Mrs. Clinton's' run for the White House, or asking 'would you go to the 'brain surgeon's wife' to work on your tumor.

How refreshing that that kind of talk has been, for the most part, ignored. In the few instances, that it hasn't escaped angry ridicule.

[jackson_dem]

9. Obama and especially Hillary were denied access to the Senate and governorships?

Hillary literally wrote her own ticket to the Senate. Obama got elected to the Senate at the young age of 44. Was everyone supposed to anoint him senator as soon as he hit age 30?

Edwards' inexperience was a big question for him in 2004 and rightfully so. Is he black or a female? No. He was just inexperienced at the time.

[mojowork_n]

10. It's called the long view.

You know, historical context.

All those Original Signers who had to go back to the cotton fields, or the kitchen, after they'd penned their John Hancock's.