Monday, January 21, 2008

Oprah is in trouble with women. As it turns out, there are plenty of women who believe that you ought to put a person in office just because she's a woman. These women believe, it would seem, that race is not a good enough reason to put a person in office.

But, as it turns out, in the U.S. race has most often trumped gender (or class, for that matter). After all, in the mid-nineteenth century when Europe was undergoing its class revolutions, we got into a civil war instead. We granted "all men" the vote long before we granted it to women. Not saying it's right (I don't believe it is) but it is how things are here.

To get mad at Oprah for not supporting your favorite liberal democrat is just plain silly. As an American, I don't identify myself, politically, as a white male. In fact, the one person I really wanted to see in this primary season, and the one person for whom I would have fervently campaigned, is Condi. But I have a sneaky suspicion that if there were a general election between Condi and, let's say, John Edwards, Oprah and every one of her little minions would be voting Edwards. Would they be traitors for doing so? Of course not. It would just mean that they had the sense to vote for the candidate whose ideas most fit their own.

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