Wilde's amazing rocket

Okay. So I'm going to reframe this Clinton/Tubman thing a bit. Sam, as you know, I think you're right. I believe that Clinton appropriated Tubman's achievements to score political points for herself. At its very best, the analogy was hyperbolic and inappropriate. At its worst, the analogy fails on racial, sexual, and regional bases. Do we really want to raise the specter of slavery at a time when Democrats are trying to win southern states? Also, it strikes me as odd that many commenters have referred to Tubman as an African American. A lot of white people use "African American" when they mean "person of color" (or, more commonly, "black"). Tubman wasn't a citizen, and to call her an American strikes me as disrespectful. 

More important, Obama is not a slave who has to Keep Going, nor are the voters, nor is the DNP, nor is America. Obama is a Democrat I am going to vote for so that no McCain administration can dig the U.S. further into debt, war, and despair. 

As a Democrat, I recognize the importance of the narrative arc we've constructed. But Clinton's use of Tubman pains me.

It's not about Tubman as a role model. It's not about feeling part of the struggle for basic human rights. It's not even about using an analogy based on a common history of the fight against racism and sexism. The problem is that the senator used Tubman as a symbol that conveniently incorporates the categories of woman and negritude. (Here, I'm choosing Sartre's version of negritude, rather than Benjamin Rush's or Fanon's.) The Tubman symbol itself provided an image of unity, and it was a short step from there to find an opportune piece of rhetoric produced by the Tubman symbol.  

Unity by itself as a piece of rhetoric has tremendous political charge. Just ask President Wilson about his White House screening of the infamous D.W. Griffith film about post-Civil War unity. Cue the footage, accompanied by that Wagner tune.

If this part of this post seems a little too strong, consider its scale beside the scale of Senator Clinton's rhetoric. My invective doesn't even hold a taper.

**Another caveat: Only the next part of this post is directed specifically at another person.

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Ed: I've concluded that you no longer get to talk to me. You can spend your life believing that women are as good as men only to the extent that they resemble men, that you are always the smartest person in the room, that tucking your t-shirt into your pants is a good idea, and that Sam should step out on his crazy wife. But you will never spend another moment of your sad, silly life interacting with me. Another tip: if you want to commit passive suicide by yelling at men with guns, try a little harder. It's not rocket science.