Where Old Democrats Go To Die –

A grudge-nursing home?

This time Liza tells the story and more than the politics of race OR sex, it’s about real change over time and whether we really believe in it, whether we even have the words to conceive of it:

Over and over again the surrogates who’ve race baited the Obama
campaign have been all over the age of 55: Joe Johnson, Bill Clinton, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Sergio Bendixen, Gloria Steinem. Most have been
either WW2 babies or first wave boomers.
In other words, these are people who came of age in a segregated
America and who are used to a society forged on a hierarchy of
entitlements.
Entitlements in which The (white) Man always comes first.

Which is why a lot of the older feminists supporting Obama see him as
“breaking the rule” of trying to snatch away from white women they’re
right to have their vote (and their will) count first. In their world,
after The (white) Man, comes the The (white) Woman. The people, those pesky millennials who are voting for Obama in droves, are messing up big time with the early Boomers “but it’s my turn” mojo.

. . .Ferraro doesn’t even have words to describe what is happening. Change doesn’t even exist in her vocabulary. What she has to say is : “And the country is caught up in the concept”. The country is enthralled in the “concept” of a black man as president, not the reality.

Of course one doesn’t automatically lose all imagination for new stories when one’s own story is near its end. Sometimes age is itself liberating and opens up new creative paths, rather than feeding old resentments. (I read a book on post-menopausal women discovering a whole new creative life, through what we actually call “The Change”.)

But it happens a lot. And maybe we forget the story we told just the other day, and forget that young folks have minds like steel traps and naturally latch onto one’s exact words, when for example a self-styled world leader underlines words like “denounce AND reject” on national tv, and then airily pretends it doesn’t apply to her own words and meanings:

Obama said the statement was an attempt to divide America with “slice and dice” politics, and he called on Clinton to denounce the statement. On Tuesday, Clinton said she “did not agree” with Ferraro’s remarks.

People of good will and sufficient cognitive capacity — whatever our race, sex, education and party affiliation — might want to bring AGE into the storylines of this landmark campaign season, and start to figure out why despite all our knowledge and belief in change over time, we can’t talk about that either.