Ever since Sarah Palin was picked as the VP candidate we have suffered through almost every accusation against her that you could possibly think of except for “She’s was really born a man”. (note – I expect this to be the next battle cry from the PDS crowd). The latest, and one that I must say was very amusing, comes from Juan Melli over at PolitickerNJ. I’ll give you the link even though I feel kind of dirty for doing that.
According to Juan, Sarah has betrayed Susan B Anthony by pricking Obama over his record as a community organizer.
This year’s historic candidacy of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama wouldn’t even be possible without the work of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin might not even be allowed to vote, let alone run for office had it not been for women’s suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony.
But that thought probably didn’t cross her mind last week at the Republican National Convention when she compared her experience to Obama’s: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”
So now we have Martin Luther King as a community organizer too?? While one could argue that Martin Luther King did act to bring people together for their common self interests, I think it stretches the bounds of the term in question to try and say what he did was ‘community organizing’. I would also have to say that while Susan B Anthony was a social activist and took part in the woman’s suffrage movement she doesn’t fit into the category of a community organizer either since the definition I found states “Community organizers act as area-wide coordinators of programs for different agencies in an attempt to meet community needs for various services.”.
What ‘agencies’ exactly did Martin Luther King, Susan B Anthony and (to address another battle cry being heard on the left) did Jesus coordinate with?
This is just a blatant, and somewhat ham-fisted, attempt to bolster Obama’s position by implying that his community organizer days in Chicago have a link to great Republicans such as MLK and Susan B. Anthony, and thus he is part of a long line of great Americans as well as a great religious figure. It is even more amusing that Juan tries to tie him to life long Republicans in the case of King and Susan B. Anthony. Perhaps he is attempting to siphon off Republican votes the way Sarah siphoned off Hillary voters.
My favorite paragraph though has to be this one:
…They could have tried to draw parallels between Palin’s dedication to her community and organizers like Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Jane Addams, Frances Perkins or Rosa Parks. At the very least, they could have acknowledged her humble place among such a proud lineage of leaders whose sacrifices left each successive generation a ceiling with a few more cracks than that of their predecessors. Instead we were told that those kinds of people don’t have any “actual responsibilities.”
In one fell stroke, suddenly Obama’s work on a community counsel where he was responsible for essentially nothing being equated to Harriet Tubman, who risked her life time and time again; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and even Rosa Parks. I never knew that Obama put himself at such great personal risk for what he believed in, and the amazing thing is that I sincerely doubt that one of these women would describe themselves as “community organizers”.
Also, I would ask, what responsibilities did Obama have in his position as community savior organizer? What was he responsible for and what was he held accountable for? I write a blog, but just because I have some print out there that people have read doesn’t make me a journalist. Just because someone works as a community organizer it doesn’t put them in the same company as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks or Harriet Tubman.
I would suggest that Juan should take a nice hot shower now because after a stretch like this one his muscles are sure to be sore.
Apologies on the title to Andrew Dominik
