I don’t agree with every syllable of Nicholas Guariglia’s commentary, but this part works:
Senator Harry Reid is a corrupt statist, embodying everything wrong with the 111th U.S. Congress. But he isn’t a bigot. Reid deserves, and will likely receive, a humiliating electoral defeat in November. But he doesn’t deserve a coerced resignation, which would most assuredly be spun as a moment of grand martyrdom. …
It’s unbecoming — and plain wrong — to attack a man’s character based on a moment of flippancy and poor phraseology. That’s what the race hucksters on the left have done to conservatives for years. They’re wrong to do so. Why then would conservatives like Michael Steele feel justified in replicating such cheap behavior themselves? Two wrongs do not make a right.
I would defer to Michael Steele on this one, being as he is in the group that was the target of the derogatory name. This isn't however, a problem of a poor choice of words. It would not all be better if he had said "an African American dialect". His statement underscores his view that a light skinned black man is more acceptable than a dark skinned black who speaks in a dialect consistent with his race. Drop the racist word, and it's still a bigots point of view.
Yes, trktrash13 has this one.
The weird part of it all is that none if was was necessary to have been said in the first place. Even stranger is that it did not come out until after Reid did Obama's bidding with the Health Care bill.
It would have been better had he said nothing at all. Those who are elected to write our laws, which require a really good grasp on the English language, really should be held accountable for their use of words.
Reid wasn't saying that Obama is more acceptable TO HIM because he is light-skinned. He was saying that because Obama was light-skinned, he was more ELECTABLE. Here's the passage from the book as set up in an Atlantic Magazine blog:
Obviously Reid's "private" comments were not private enough.
Look, a candidate's skin color shouldn't matter at all, of course. Of course. But it would be silly to pretend that it is not a factor in how people evaluate other people. Reid is being hammered for failing to pretend something silly. There are plenty of good and sufficient reasons to dislike Reid and hope he loses in November. But he's getting a bum rap on this, and Republicans should save their ammunition for more important battles.