<p>I know it is really far-fetched and was a comedy but I would like to see a candidate like the one Robin Wiliams played in “Man of the Year”. Shake things up. </p>
<p>As much as people are excited about Obama he just doesn’t really inspire me that much. It’s like being excited about having Cream of Wheat for breakfast after decades of nothing but Oatmeal. You’re excited for the change but aside fromt he base ingredient and a bit of texture it’s the same thing. I want Lucky Charms or Belgian Waffles…then I’ll get excited! (I almost said Fruity Pebbles, my favorite cereal, instead of Lucky Charms but figured I would get ripped for using a word often associated with homosexuals…now I know how the President feels!) lol</p>
<p>“Well, did you trust George Bush? Please. These guys are politicians who are after your vote. Whining against Obama as if he is especially unworthy of trust while apparently overlooking McCain’s and Bush’s proven lack of trustworthiness is just plain weird. I mean, in another post you claim Obama hasn’t yet done anything, and yet here you are just wailing away about how untrustworthy he is. Bush and McCain have both done a lot, including supporting the trillion dollar war, supporting the deaths of thousands of Americans for a cause that is as obviously futile as rocks trying to fly. And yet they have your trust? You trust them more than you trust Obama?”</p>
<p>I never said that I voted for Bush or would vote for McCain. Please, to personally attack me for my opinions and actions, especially ones that I do not have or have not done, is really sort of strange. I have never said that I voted for Bush. I am neither a Republican or Democrat and find the political parties in this country to be flawed and have no affiliation and have not for about 20 years. I may vote if I see that either candidate is better than the other in October, or maybe by VP choice!</p>
<p>If you want my feedback about your posts, they are overly dramatic. Your paranoid description of shadowing a woman down the street and then surmising that she was afraid of you for being black, not only because you are a 6 ft 6 in man in a isolated area, is downright ludicrous. Get over it! You have had opportunities, and so do lots of others in this country. To turn things like a large man shadowing a small woman down a street into a racial affair is the kind of attitude that is getting Obama into trouble in his campaign. It is very difficult for a Harvard Law graduate senator to cry poor and say that he was discriminated against. It just doesn’t ring true. Same for others who are privileged. We have all had bad things happen in our lives, and the sooner people stop complaining about real or imagined problems, the better off we will all be.</p>
<p>I so dislike it when people decide what someone else “obviously” thinks and feels. Your accusations , poetsheart, about what I thought or what conclusions you think I “jumped to” to are inaccurate, and based on your own perceptions. It seems to me that you jumped to conclusions, not me. I wouldn’t presume to know what you think or feel, and have to laugh at your misperceptions and (erroneous) accusations. My comment was simply that any small woman would be reasonable to be cautious when she feels nervous because a big guy was walking behind or next to her, not just because it was a big black guy. I was suggesting that there may be other reasons besides the assumed stereotypic BS that she might feel afraid or intimidated. I was suggesting that there are other reasons besides the color of one’s skin that might cause a petite female walking alone to be cautious. I am glad Dross was trying to be sensitive to her discomfort. That was decent. But I “reject” (one of his favorite terms) the implication that it was mostly because of the color of his skin. He simply doesn’t know that. I was merely positing other possible factors. Why parse every sentence? The ever increasing length of some of these posts is amusing. When someone asks a person what time it is, it isn’t necessary to tell them how to build a clock.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, your posts are usually diplomatic. The pattern of chewing up and spitting out posts line by line, with the accompanying misinterpretations, is something that is much more of Dross’s style. Have to wonder if he had a hand in drafting that post. Hmmm…</p>
<p>poetsheart-
Swatparent is spot on. Posters (myself included) should be aware of how their posts come across. Many of us tire of supercilious lecturing, line by line post dissection and false overgeneralizations, usually surrounding one theme or agenda. When some posters stand on the same soapbox with the same tired lectures, others tend to turn a deaf ear.</p>
<p>“It is very difficult for a Harvard Law graduate senator to cry poor and say that he was discriminated against.”</p>
<p>He’s a 46-year-old black man who lives in this country. Of course he’s been discriminated against. Condoleezza Rice was discriminated against too, as she has plainly said. These people achieved what they did despite discrimination.</p>
<p>Join the club. For the most part, we have all had difficult times in our lives. The trick is to stop whining about them and move forward. </p>
<p>Hopefully, we can all do that. The blame game is over. This is America, land of opportunity. Rice and Obama succeeded, despite Obama being 1/2 white. He managed to overcome that impediment, and is now able to run as a black man! Isn’t America great!</p>
<p>I think people are completely deluded if they think that Obama’s comments weren’t true.</p>
<p>I am a female college student (part of the “new” generation you guys have been speaking of) who grew up in a very progressive environment, in a home that was always open for people to stay in if they needed somewhere. Throughout my childhood, my family lived with a number of people from different races and nationalities, and they all, I think, had a wonderful impact on my development. I am very thankful to have spent my childhood exposed to so many people from different walks of life.</p>
<p>That said, I absolutely feel uncomfortable when I am walking alone at night with a black man. I don’t think it is just human nature, either, to distrust things that are different (and I would be very, very careful about making statements concerning “human nature”). I can say with a good deal of certainty that I would feel a lot more uncomfortable alone on the streets with a black man than I would with an Asian man, despite knowing, becoming close with, and living with a number more black people than Asian people. I would be absolutely shocked if this made me atypical, and I think most people would agree if they were honest with themselves.</p>
<p>In reviewing post #322, the “art” of selecting snipits of each posters post, and then twisting them to try to convice others of what they “surely thought” or “surely meant”, or what they were “surely fixated on” or what a poster would “surely point out to you”… the art of putting words in other posters mouths and then twisting them to propel your opinion, of what you think is so “obvious”, to try to make it sound like a person is saying something they aren’t just so an argument can be made, and to manipulate a post as what oftentimes looks like an excuse to put forward a single-minded agenda, with an occasional salty insult or barb thrown in just to season the mix is not what I have seen in your posts. As I said, yours are usually quite well reasoned and diplomatic. That long post seems much more in the writing style of dross, not you, poetsheart.</p>
<p>Good grief, jym. I was merely pointing out that you and Dross were essentially saying the same thing. Of course, her reaction was reasonable based on all the variables presented to her at the time. Your post seemed to insist that race would have nothing to do with a woman’s reactions in such circumstances. I think most thinking people would know that that is patently false. Heck, even black women know enough to feel vulnerable in such circumstances. It’s why Drosselmeirer acknowledged that, “guys of all races need to do extra work so that gals don’t have to go through this sort of complete nonsense”. Black women watch the news, too. We too, know enough to be wary of being a woman alone on the streets, whether being followed by a big black man or a big white one. But, being followed by a big black one does indeed add tinge more anxiety. Sad but true. Racist? No. Prejudicial? Yes. </p>
<p>And since when has is it somehow become a negative to address a post point be point, when one disagrees with those particular points? To me, it is a sign of intellectual integrity, and keeps one from being accused of “avoiding” addressing someone’s arguments.</p>
<p>Just as an aside, I can’t stand reading long posts with dozens of different points in them. It interferes with my desire to make pithy responses.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, if I offended you, Jym, I sincerely apologize. But I was (right or wrong) quite honestly offended by your response to what I thought was a sensitive and quite reasoned post by Drosselmeirer. swatparent actually read that same post and concluded that Dross was “whining”:eek: I have to admit that I will probably never understand how he could have come to that conclusion.:(</p>
<p>LOL hunt!
If you recall, poetsheart, the “southern bashing” thread was closed because
Perhaps it is time to invoke the same thing here and take this thread out of its misery before it becomes a trainwreck too. My point (and I know what I was thinking-- no one needs to tell me what I “must think”) is that most women will be on guard when walking alone. It isn’t always about race. Sheesh. Someone many posts back eloquently pointed out that oftentimes it is the persons demeanor, their dress, etc that is what a person reacts to.</p>
<p>I hope not! LBJ escalated an unpopular war and then was unable to get us out! </p>
<p>
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<p>But I love Cream of Wheat! … Seriously, my ideal candidate–the guy who really floated my political boat–was killed in a plane crash a few years ago. Rest in peace, Paul Wellstone.</p>
<p>I agree with you 100 percent, Hunt. (A first, possibliy). That is why I read your posts, but usually don’t read those of Serial Lengthy Posters.</p>
<p>Or should I say I read Hunt’s posts religiously? :)</p>
<p>Sorry if you were offended, poetsheart. Please tell me what in this post
was offensive. It was not pointed at anyone, it was not argumentative, it was not insulting, it was not filled with efforts to tell someone what they think or feel. It was merely presenting other possible variables in what I thought was a diplomatic fashion. I fail to see how or why this evoked a knee jerk response. I repeat (for what may be the last time, but no promises ) that it simply does not sound like you or your writing style to twist words and go for the jugular.</p>
<p>Let’s step back a minute (since we’re already way off-topic) and think about this question of whether white people, and white women in particular, experience a visceral fear of black men on the street that is different from their reaction to white men. Some people report that they do, and others report that they don’t. Some of us, including me, think that it’s so obvious as to be a trivial observation. Others seem to think that it doesn’t exist at all. What could be the cause of these differences? I suppose age could be one reason. Another might be what area of the country you grew up in, and perhaps whether it was an urban environment or not. Perhaps it matters whether there were a lot of black people where you grew up, although I suppose that could cut both ways. I guess it shows the danger of stating what may seem to you to be an obvious truism, but that may really be based on your own limited experience.</p>
<p>“swatparent actually read that same post and concluded that Dross was “whining” I have to admit that I will probably never understand how he could have come to that conclusion.”</p>
<p>Because I am very sick of blacks thinking that so much of what they experience is due to being black. A woman feels vulnerable walking down isolated streets. Rapes occur by white and blacks, etc. Much crime by blacks is black on black, so actually blacks should be the ones feeling more vulnerable in these situations that Drosselmeier described.</p>
<p>I find, as per other points being made here, that things are really assumed. Over and over, no matter how often I have said that I support neither candidate, anything I say about Obama seems to imply to others that I think McCain is better. I don’t see the political process this way, at all. I think that the current political parties are both greatly flawed. I don’t like policies from both sides. I think I am fairly typical of voters who just say that they may not vote. I have tried to look closely at what issues they represent, but there is so much waffling on both sides that I will see in October where they land. So far, neither of these candidates impresses me as someone who would be a good, or even passable, president.</p>
) that it simply does not sound like you or your writing style to twist words and go for the jugular.</p>