G. Ferraro and Her Zen "Koan"

Something is drastically wrong with me, otherwise how could I be missing something here that is so obvious to the rest of the world? All the reactions I have read to G. Ferraro's recent "inflamatory remarks" have said nothing to explain to me exactly why her words were racist and horrible. Obviously, then, everybody else is way smarter than I am. But I'd rather think that these detractors have just been snapping their whips by pure reflex, conditioned by the general biliousness of these times.

I thought my reading comprehension, though weakened, was still reasonably up to par, but now I am baffled, because her contention that B. Obama would not have been so successful if he had been a Euro, i.e. "white" man didn't strike me as being an attack. Instead it was a puzzler, and that was because I didn't find her meaning to be at all clear. II the import of her words was no more than what it appeared to be on the surface, how could the explanation she gave for Obama's success be possible?

Her statement sounded to me as if she was saying that "black" men -- formerly that much-feared and scorned bottom-most rung of American society, except when they are holding microphones in front of their faces or are carrying a ball of some kind under one arm -- actually have been discovered to have a tremendous but previously unrecognized capacity for good governance. Yet in all the years that I've been on the scene and watching things, exactly the opposite view has been held with unbreakable tightness to the bigoted breast.

Surely there couldn't have been such a total turnaround in just this one year. Things in this huge, inertia-gripped country just don't move that fast. So, though that may not have been Ms Ferraro's intent, to my ear her words actually implied that B. Obama, in his capacity as the newfound wonderful "black" man, is in fact, by opening eyes, a true worker of miracles, and that is not a racist statement but a ringing compliment instead.

Or maybe on a more mundane level she meant that B. Obama was profiting from "white" guilt or from the number of "black" voters. But I don't think you will find nearly enough of either to account for his numbers.
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This whole business shows why it's so important, especially in superheated situations, to speak in such ways that there's absolutely no room for misunderstanding. How many times have we seen people saying something more ambiguous than they realized at first, and the listeners, unable to unravel it in the two seconds that they want to think about it, are so piqued by their inability that right away they choose to jump on any part of the statement that can be taken to be verboten.

G. Ferraro's first mistake, then, was coming out with something so gnarled that it couldn't instantly be understood yet led people to think that they understood perfectly, and the second was letting herself, as a so-called "white" woman, be heard having the effrontery to use the term "white man" so close to B. Obama's name and therefore by absolute implication to the concept of "black men." In such cases in various circles nothing more needs to be heard, because she spoke in an atmosphere in which every statement is avidly searched for possible use as gasoline to be thrown on the electoral fires.

Her third mistake was also a matter of meaning, and it arose from a shortcoming common to most Americans, and that is a habitual slackness in the use of that wonderful language, English, that they profess to be using. Instead she should have taken a cue from yours truly, and in place of "white men " and "black men," she should have chosen the far more accurate and meaningful terms, "Euro" and "Rainbow" men, respectively.

Then she would have struck a great blow for linguistic freedom, though that event would have been slow to dawn on most of her listeners. Still, she would've been all right, and the Clinton-haters, both the traditional ones and the newborns, would have had to hook their talons elsewhere.