Is Barack black enough? Now that's a silly question
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential quest has launched some revealing conversations, particularly about what makes a black person "black." Even for those who think as I do that the answer is breathtakingly obvious, the question is not frivolous. For Obama, the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, the emerging media narrative invites a re-examination of widely held assumptions. Is race a matter of color? Ancestry? Or experiences? "There are African-Americans who don't think that you're black enough, who don't think that you have had the required experience," reporter Steve Kroft asked Obama as they cruised Chicago's South Side during a recent 60 Minutes profile. "The truth of the matter is," Obama mused, gazing at the neighborhoods outside their vehicle's windows, "when I'm walking down the south side of Chicago and visiting my barbershop and playing basketball in some of these neighborhoods, those aren't questions I get asked." No, those are the kind of questions some people ask about you when you're the first black presidential candidate to have a viable chance of winning.
Prime Minister's swipe 'helped Obama'
PRIME Minister John Howard's swipe at Barack Obama helped raise the profile of the Democrat presidential hopeful, says US civil rights veteran Jesse Jackson. In an interview to be run on the SBS Dateline program, Reverend Jackson, a two-times presidential candidate himself, accuses Mr Howard of meddling in US politics with his suggestion that terrorists would look forward to the election of an Obama-led government because it would pull US troops out of Iraq. "Sometimes arrogance makes us over-reach," Mr Jackson tells interviewer George Negus. "But in a strange kind of way it really helped Obama, because he gave him even more international stature the fact that his candidacy would evoke from the leader of another nation a response." Mr Jackson says that while Mr Howard warned that a troop withdrawal would be seen as a defeat for America, he believed the US had already been beaten in Iraq.
Politicians plugged in
WASHINGTON - Barack Obamas newly revamped Web site looks a lot like MySpace and Facebook, and that is no accident. As a presidential candidate offering himself as a generational change agent, Obama is leveraging online social networking in a nearly unprecedented way in yet another clear measure of how the Internet is transforming politics. The new look of the site, launched last week, invites the user to create a profile for public viewing, complete with an uploaded digital photo. Anyone can create a personal blog. Users also can create their own on-site network of friends and public groups arrayed around any common interest that moves them. As of Feb. 16, less than one week after Obama announced his presidential campaign and the Web site launched, more than 3,000 groups had formed on the site, ranging from the Iowa Union Members for Obama and New Hampshire Firefighters for Barack to the Hip Hop for Obama.
Barack Obama Hops on the Web 2.0 Bandwagon
Remember in 2004 when Howard Dean discovered blogs and it "revolutionized" presidential campaigning? That was quaint. This time around, blogs are old hat and everyone is looking to use the internet to connect to you, the concerned and unapathetic voter. Prepare to get jaded and cynical. Barack Obama looks to be diving into this whole "Web 2.0" thing head first, what with his own Facebook profile, Flickr account, and YouTube account. In addition to all this stuff, he also has my.barackobama.com, a social networking type site for his supporters to create profiles, network, and make blogs all about how great Barack Obama is. It's clear that the internet is going to play an even larger role in the election this year, for better or worse. Do you think all this buzzword bandwagon hopping is going to help, or is this still politics as usual? –Adam Frucci Barack Obama [via NotCot.org] .
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