Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Today’s Washington Post contained this little gem:
[T]he next day, with renewed vigor, Clinton compared her effort to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan to the abolition of slavery . . . .
Just when you thought it couldn’t get more insane. It was hard enough to stomach the fact that Clinton had initially supported the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan voters and then–when it became politically expedient–suddenly became their most strident defender.
But now she’s making metaphors about the abolition of slavery where she magically transforms from Simon Legree into Frederick Douglass. Poof! And let’s not forget that a black man, who won the delegate math for the nomination several months ago, has to put up with this shit from a white, millionaire, former first lady.
I’m sure the Clinton speech writers are already workshopping her July 4th speech:
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a woman in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon her to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is “Counting the Votes in Florida and Michigan.” I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Expect another dazzling performance of oratory, like this one:
