Gloria Steinem and Melissa Hariss-Lacewell discuss Race and Gender
In a previous post i linked to steinem’s (idiotic) piece on gender and race. Here she engages in a discussion with Melissa Harris-Lacewell about the issues on Democracy Now. Although you can read the transcript, knowing Dr. Harris-Lacewell I’d strongly urge you to listen.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
This is one reason why I abhor characterizations of Obama as hip, fresh, smooth, and hustler among others. Qualities like casual authority, outsider status, media manipulation and popular appeal which were a critical part of the successes of JFK, Carter, Reagan, Bill Clinton, and G.W. Bush are looked at with suspicion when employed by Obama. I’ll link you to this piece by President Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer. What strikes me is how rare perquisites derived from being the son of a wealthy diplomat to Great Britain are treated by Widmer as objective acquisitions of a keen intellect rather than noblesse oblige. For Kennedy, Acheson, Bundy, and Dulles, among others, directing foreign policy was part of a class right to run the world.
This is similar to the Hillary Clinton camp using her role as first lady to a popular president to first win a US senate seat and later contend for a presidential nomination. Prof. Lacewell skillfully brought the entirety of personal, racial, and gender history to illuminate the issue.
What I think is overlooked in discussions about the domestic symbolic value of a woman or black president is the diminution of US power in international relations and the need for a new global consensus beyond North America and Europe in order to solve immediate challenges to security, health, and the environment. Such a consensus will challenge both the left and right, religious and secular.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:26 am
The identity issues are historical baggage on an evolutionary train that left the identity station some time ago. That evolutionary train is as American as apple pie - but we all spend scant precious cycles studying and observing its course and its operations and that’s precisely why it rules us all.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I listened to that recently, I think Gloria is going to think twice before she does anything like that again.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I heard this interview last week & from the jump it was interesting but then got more intense (to me), when Melissa Harris-Lacewell took a bite out of Gloria Steinem’s ass & op-ed piece.
Bygbaby
January 25th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
melissa ain’t no joke. on the REAL.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Steinem gave up on her argument in the first 5 minutes.
On a side note, as a fellow native Detroiter, I’m guessing that you are sharing my profound sense of embarassment and disappointment.
January 29th, 2008 at 11:03 am
DLT i feel where you’re coming from, I’m from the D too. The worst part was my total lack of shock or surprise.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
comedy gold…,
did this pitiful, (can’t keep his dick in his pants) 3rd line inheritor of the civil rights movement do anything to earn the position of authority and trust bestowed on him? Or, was he just another skating symbol and legacy, a lazy legacy who by name and social relations ascended to that office?
the city of detroit got exactly the “leadership” it deserves….,
January 29th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
i know the mayor and his (former) chief of staff indirectly. and am deeply deeply saddened by what’s going on. this has been a challenge for him, and will likely remain a challenge.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:55 am
One very sorry ass….,