On the other hand, Richardson would balance the ticket in a much less conventional but much more meaningful sense: it’d produce a ticket with two ethnic minority members, balanced between the Mideast and Southwest.

DHIMMITUDE LAD RIDES AGAIN
alec | Homepage | 06.05.08 - 11:54 pm | #

I dunno why I didn't say it in the article and I don't really want to revisit it now, but it's also worth saying that the respective races of Obama and Richardson are both ciphers - that is, they're only identifiably members of an ethnic minority in a very abstract, superficial sense. From what I can tell, they each have essentially American biographies - the intellectual rising from modest means and the humanitarian enabled by family prestige.

In every sense but skin and names they're whiter than I am; freaking out about the horrifying duskiness of a person like that makes you look like a racist idiot even to many other racist idiots. This is especially true of Richardson - hell, you change the names around and reading your biography will generally make you sneer and call him Whitey.

And we all know that unless Whitey gets at least a VP in there, he's gonna kill Barry O out of spite. Nobody wants that; even LBJ could only stand killing two Kennedys.
alec | Homepage | 06.06.08 - 12:02 am | #