The Caucasian Card

Typical liberal nonsense....to compare life in a Viet-Cong prision camp to the life in America on any level shows the all-too-common historical ignoance of the left. Sorry for the facts, but Obama IS relatively inexperienced and untested and no main-stream-media affirmative action campaign can change that fact.
Kindly signed,
Conservative from Texas, and proud supporter of the status quo established by Republicans (sec of state Colin Powell, sec of state Condi Rice, sec of labor Elaine Chow, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, etc., etc).

Listen up you gringos. When our amigo Barack becomes El Presidente you gringos will get what is coming to you. No mas pistolas. No mas hunting animalitos. No mas gasolina for your pick up trucks. No mas patrols en la frontera. No mas Remember the Alamo. Our amigo Barack will return Tejas to Mejico and all you gringos will have to go vivir in Arkansas. Jerry Jones included. Comprende?

Dear Ms. Quindlen,

I am a mixed race Englishman and have been following the US presidential race with some fervour. I religiously read articles from Real Clear Politics, Huffington Post, Politico etcetera, simply to give me a broad spectrum of what the general lie of the campaign is, on a day to day basis.

Your article ???The Caucasian Card???, ???Pound for pound??? (borrowing from the boxing fraternity) is one of the most meaningful and thought provoking articles I have read on the race issue. For a white person ( sounds patronising, but I know you will understand) you have expressed in your article more eloquently than most people of colour could have, our frustration when a veiled attempt is made to play the race card and in the same breath blame us for it.

Well done and pleeeease lets have more of your objective articles!!!

Sorry but I disagree with you on just about all those counts. Firstly, affirmitive actoin, while i understand the reason behind it, has turned into nothing but a quota to fill. Instead of hiring the BEST person, regardless of race or sex, for the job it is about hiring the best person in a specific category for the job. That, in my mind, is bad business. Secondly, I'm tired of hearing the same old cliche' that "its hard to be a black man in America". Well I don't see how thats accurate. That line gets thrown out and people give sympathy for it, but I for one get tired of hearing some of the blacks in the public eye, Mr. Obama, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to name a few, throw around "they" and "them" comments and using the stereotype that all whites are racist. I"ll give these men credit to being great public speakers and having much charisma, but the whole "whites are suppressing the black people of America" thing has gotten pretty old. If a white person says "they" or "them" or makes a statement on how they feel about affirmitive action it is automatical thrown out there as a racist comment and the person is attacked as a racist or supremesist. Yet if a black person says those same things then its not racist and is all about equality? I don't think so. That's a bunch of bullsh*t. If freedom of speech and opinion can be voiced by one group it she be able to be voiced by any other group. The point being that Obama uses it for sympathy and to claim a man is being racist, falsely. And McCain's retort was that Obama wrongly accused him of this because it seems to be acceptable for a black man to accuse a white man of it regardless of the reason and he's not going to let his name be marked that way in error.

To shawnldb2004:
I'm a 38 year old white male from Northeast GA. I completely believe you and my heart goes out to you. Im sorry you have been treated unfairly. However, I believe both of us would be lying if we said we didn't harbor certain descriminations- some legitimate, and some we should be ashamed of. The problem for me is when black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton work racism into every single situation, from Hurricane Katrina to Global Warming, and (TRUST ME) this election if Obama doesn't win. Also, seeing that these two clowns speak for the entire black population of America. I would like to step up at this time as representative for the entire white population and issue this statement: EVERYTHING AINT MY FAULT.

"Every politician since the beginning of time has had speechwriters, but Obama wrote his most topical speech this campaign season, the one on race (post-Jeremiah Wright).". Not sure if you are aware, but that famous race speech can no longer be found on the Obama website, nor is spoken about any longer by the media because less than two weeks after it was give, it was refuted by Obama himself when he threw his Reverend under the bus and decided that his grandmother, a "typical white person", was no longer a racist.

In December 1966, when John McCain requested his first combat assignment in Vietnam, Barack Obama turned 5 years old and was enjoying the freedoms a child should enjoy.

As Obama turned 7, McCain had survived a burning jet fire on the USS Forrestal and had just flown his 23rd bombing mission over communist North Vietnam.

In 1973, as Obama reached age 12, McCain was finally released from a prisoner-of-war camp in the Hanoi Hilton.

At age 15, when Obama was still in high school, McCain became the commanding officer of a Naval Training Squadron in Florida. He turned a poorly managed military unit into a distinguished, combat-ready team.

When Obama reached the legal age of 21 and was experimenting with pot and cocaine, McCain declined an admiral promotion and ran for and was elected to Congress.

By 1987, Obama was a young man of 25 and McCain had assumed the office of senator from Arizona (after a successful four-year tour in the U.S. House of Representatives).

At age 36, Obama looked on as Sen. McCain was named one of Time magazine's 25 most influential people in America.

Whom do we choose as our next leader? Do we choose a man with proven military and political achievements, or a man with little experience other than a stint as a community leader and junior senator? Decisions, decisions!

Ugh, so now Obama has something to hide academically because McCain was 894th out of 899. The Republican can be the most mediocre of the mediocre, but it's the other guy who has to "prove" himself.

You can't be Harvard Law Review editor or an adjunct constitutional law professor at University of Chicago by having weak academics -- or, is it that he must be an undeserving beneficiary of affirmative action (see, this sort of thing is where racial coding and "dog whistles" to those in the country who might not vote for a black guy come into play), as well, now, in spite of no evidence of this? Double or nothing on the Obama smears, and meanwhile McCain was still 894th out of 899, and shows all the attention to detail and intellectual engagement of another president who we know was an academic joke, and who we gave a pass on this, and whose administration showed this lack of attention to detail and lack of engagement every step of the way -- George Bush.