Wednesday, March 12, 2008

My comment wasn't racist, it was a fact

An unapologetic Geraldine Ferraro said Wednesday morning that her comments about the electoral impact of Barack Obama's race have been taken out of context, and that she stands by her words.
Ferraro stirred controversy with her recent remarks that Obama's campaign was successful because he was black.
"It wasn't a racist comment, it was a statement of fact," she said on CBS' Early Show, adding that she would leave Hillary Clinton's national finance committee if she were asked, but would not stop raising money for the New York senator's presidential bid. She also blamed Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, for misinterpreting her remarks.
Ferraro also told ABC's Good Morning America that "every time" someone makes a negative comment about Obama, they are accused of racism.
Late Tuesday, she told interviewer that she felt she was being attacked because she was white.
"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," she told the (Torrance, California) Daily Breeze. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
In another interview Tuesday, she compared Obama's situation to her own 24 years ago, when she was the first female candidate for vice president.
She told a FOX News interviewer: "I got up and the question was asked, 'Why do you think Barack Obama is in the place he is today" as the party's delegate frontrunner.
"I said in large measure, because he is black. I said, Let me also say in 1984 - and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times - in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president," she said.
In her first interview with Daily Breeze, published late last week, Ferraro said "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro told the newspaper. She also said Hillary Clinton had been the victim of a "sexist media."
Obama himself has called the comments "patently absurd," and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, has called for Clinton to cut ties with the former New York congresswoman, who serves on her campaign's finance committee. Clinton has said that she does not agree with Ferraro's remarks.
Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Eleithee told CNN's Sasha Johnson Tuesday evening that "Ms. Ferraro is speaking for herself. We have made clear that we do not agree with her remarks."

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