Ferraro's truth & Durham H-S's race pandering

Folks, I’m sending the following email to Durham Herald Sun editor Bob Ashley. He edits both the H-S’s news and editorial sides. I invite his response, but don’t really expect one since he’s never responded on the record.

John
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Dear Editor Ashley:

Re: H-S editorial “Playing with 'What if?'” (3/16/08)

You distorted former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks that race and gender can sometimes convey an advantage.

You also inadvertently helped prove the truth of what Ferraro said when you asked: “If she were a man, would Fritz Mondale have chosen her as his running mate?”

Of course not!

From the beginning Ferraro’s said the reason Mondale chose her was she’s a woman.

That proves her point.

You say: “People are who they are, and their identities are all wrapped up in many components, including age, experience, family history, genetic predisposition and, yes, race and gender. We can't take one of those threads, unravel it and try to predict what the person would be like.”

But you know Ferraro didn’t predict what Obama would be like.

She offered her opinion that Obama’s emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination because of the response of Democratic primary voters to, in part, his ethnicity.

You say: “The truth is that a lot of people want to inject race into the campaign, and Ferraro is apparently one.”

That’s disingenuous.

You know race is a huge factor in the Dems’ presidential primaries; and that Obama so far is the beneficiary of that.

Throughout her public life Sen. Clinton has received overwhelming and often passionate support from blacks and upper-income whites. They’ve supported her despite her involvement in a series of scandals.

But their support largely evaporated this year.

In Democratic primaries, Obama’s winning on average about 90% of the black vote and a majority of the upper-income white vote. As a result, he’s now the front-runner for the nomination.

Would that be the case if everything about Sens. Clinton and Obama and their platforms were the same except that Obama’s father was a white Kenyan instead of a black Kenyan?

You’re sliming Ferraro because she gave the honest and obvious answer to that question.

Your editorial reminded me of the way the Herald Sun so often slimed and race-baited following the lies of Crystal Mangum and Mike Nifong.

Talk about injecting race into something!

Would the H-S have played the Duke Hoax story the way you did if Mangum was white and the Duke lacrosse players black?

Wouldn’t you have asked questions about why all 46 black students were being ordered to submit to police DNA testing and face and torso photographing, when the police knew some weren’t even at the party?

And wouldn’t you have objected to the CASTRATE rally, the vigilante poster and the loud and virulent racism of many Duke professors if they’d been targeting blacks instead of whites?

Would you have been so fulsome in your praise for Nifong if it had been black students he was lying about and attempting to frame?

C’mon, Editor Ashley, be honest.

Inject race into a campaign? Ferraro’s not doing that.

But Mike Nifong, the Herald Sun and most of the liberal/leftist media all injected race into the Duke frame-up campaign.

Ferraro is truth-telling.

Your editorial attacking her is just the latest instance of H-S race pandering.

If you care to respond, I'll publish it.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina