10.  Riding in the snowy night through Western Pennsylvania, no longer scary to me because I KNOW it’s Obama country now, listening to my new favorite Brazilian singer, Mariana Aydar, and hearing the soft snoring of  “the guys” as I drive.

9.  Having my brother call at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday, asking for an ETA (estimated time of arrival) in Chicago, because everyone else is already there.

8.  Not being able to drive up 51st St. for the first time in 20 years, because the Secret Service has cordoned off 51st St. from Woodlawn to Drexel in order to PROTECT MY PRESIDENT AND HIS FAMILY.  Hallelujah! Go Chi-Town!

7.  Arriving to the sounds of my boisterous family, the smells of sweet potato pie and baked spaghetti and greens that I can eat RIGHT NOW, not Thursday.

6.  Sleeping late and waking up to the laughter in the kitchen as my mother and sister and nieces wrestle with the turkey. (I’m not a cook; I’m The Clean-Up Woman, with only a few apologies to the song of the same name!)

5.  Soaking in my mother’s amazingly deep claw’s foot, cast-iron bathtub for a whole hour before the rest of the family descends on us. (God, I miss long, hot baths!)

4.  Answering the yearly rash of questions from my sons about who all those people are who keep showing up and how they are related to us, and greeting all my long-lost cousins and their husbands and wives and children and realizing that, even though I don’t come home more than twice a year, they know PRECISELY who I am.

3.   Watching and smelling all the last-minute preparations that my sister makes because my mom’s hands no longer have the strength to hold the pots or fix the food, even though she still has opinions.

2.  Getting to do the prayer as my sister and my brothers and their children and my children and my husband and everyone else hovers over a table so filled with food we can’t eat it all on the first go-round. (But we all know Brays and McNatts and Broadnaxes never stop eating!)

1.  Being well, being happy, being alive, being together with the people who don’t care at all about how much or little I make, or what church I serve, or what people think of me.  Being with the folks for whom I am always and forever, “Ro.”   Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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It was a relief to know that this was a statistical falsehood—many thanks to Jack and Jill Politics for posting the Daily Kos link that gives the lie to this propaganda!  Nonetheless, I have been through this before, a long time ago, when one group of marginalized people (the LGBT community) felt marginalized by another group of marginalized people (African Americans).  The first time someone presented the issue to me then, I drank the Kool-Aid, and was willing to imagine the extreme homophobia of the Black community.  But I’ve lived a long time since then, seen firsthand the homophobia in white communities of the so-called “enlightened,” learned how many of my own family members were gay or lesbian, realized how committed I am to this issue, and discovered how easily the white LGBT community is willing  to overlook its own racism and condescension for a chance to scapegoat an entire community.

Some of the conversation we are having right now is based in reality:  in many quarters, the opposition to same sex marriage in the (not-at-all monolithic) Black community is theologically based.  It takes a literal reading of Leviticus to get there, and I’m a totally non-literal lover of Scripture.  But I also imagine several things:  first, that there is what’s in the Good Book, versus what’s going on in real life–thus the persistent reality of African-American congregations populated with a host of gay and lesbian people who neither ask nor tell.  Second, there is the legacy of racism, expressed via a horror among African Americans about any kind of sexuality that would even hint of our “abnormality,” and thus our non-humanity.  Remember that, for centuries, we were the people who were the object of sexual fantasy and nightmare.  We were exotic and unusual and dirty and bad and other.  So many of us have, for a very long time, overreacted by being totally “straight-life” when it came to issues of sexuality. (Any black woman who’s been present for a  late-night conversation about the boundaries around oral sex will know what I mean!)

Those of us who have learned to let go of the public relations version of black sexuality, however, and be our true selves, whatever our sexual preferences, nonetheless partially recognize the drill.  Ours is also a recognition of the breadth and depth of sexuality and love, combined with real-life exposure to men who have loved men and women who have loved women longer than some of us have been in the world. And some of us continue to understand that nothing—least of all, sexuality—absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.  As a minister, it is this nuanced understanding I am working and praying for!

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After the Hillary-Barack wars, I must confess to being more than a little weary, and I admit to taking a break from political news in its entirety as the summer began. I was ready to let everything rest until the conventions, maybe even until Labor Day, before I resumed my relentless tracking of every Obama-McCain poll known to humanity. But so much had been made of this big overseas trip, so many people followed his every move. And I recalled how eagerly people from other countries spoke to me about Obama when I was in Europe and Africa earlier this year. So I decided to watch a few minutes of the Berlin speech, just to catch up.

I ended up watching every word, entranced by a leader who might represent me without shaming me, persuaded to listen as he asked people who couldn’t even vote for him to join forces against the narrow, fundamentalist hatreds that are threatening life on our planet. I sat for 25 minutes, imagining what it might be like to hear this man speak with the mandate of the American people at his back. I envisioned the possibility that I might actually have to change my life if he asked it of me, because for the first time since I was a very little girl, someone might be president that I might actually be compelled to listen to.

Someone who can ask us to live into our best selves, to make common cause with the people of the entire world so that those at risk might live better, safer lives–these are sacrificial requests, the currency of faithfulness. Barack Obama may not be a minister, but he has the skill and the vision to speak to the hearts of people, to our deepest longings to make a difference, to our desires to be proud of our country and to ensure its commitment to values that matter to each of us. Perhaps he has given better, more important speeches since his campaign began. And I know that I am not in agreement with him on some vitally important issues–most notably, marriage equality. But I maintain that it was a near-religious experience to hear him call on each of us to live into history, to grasp this moment and reverse the near-fatal course on which our nation has been set. May it be so….

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I am writing to you as a liberal religious leader, personally committed to the values you have so brilliantly represented in the public square, and as a black woman who is grateful that I am alive at a time when a black man has a real chance to become President of the United States. I’m proud to share with you the additional identity of Chicagoan; you once represented as a state senator the district in which my mother and much of the rest of my family still live. I’m also the mother of two sons who hang on your every word; my husband and I cannot get them to bed on primary nights until you have spoken.

I mention my sons, ages 11 and 14, because they watched, along with their father and I, your appearance on The Hardball College Tour this evening. So I saw the shock and heard the disappointment in their voices after a member of the audience asked “Do you support gay marriage?” and they heard your response. You answered that you did not; that you supported civil unions and that you sought to equalize those unions on the federal level so that lesbian and gay people would have the same rights under the law that those of us who are straight can take for granted. My kids started booing as you spoke. “Mom, that’s messed up!” my son Daniel said. And my stomach started to hurt.

You and I are both people of faith, Senator, and I am a minister in what may be the only religious community more progressive than your own–Unitarian Universalism. My husband and I are raising our children in this liberal religious tradition, and they were shocked to hear that someone they so admire, and who articulates so many of the ideals they believe, could be willing to deny the benefits and blessings of marriage to lesbian and gay people.

Some part of me believes this stance is a strategic move on your part, a middle-of-the-road gesture meant to assuage the GLBT community and those of us who consider ourselves allies in their struggle for full citizenship, without alienating the more conservative crossover voters that you will need to be elected President. I also have to believe that your opinion on this issue also has been influenced by a Biblical perspective that would seem to preclude marriage as a viable option for same-sex couples. Attempting to address the issue of marriage equality, while you still have so far to go, is a risky venture. But I urge you to continue prayerful reflection about what it means–not only to GLBT people, but to their families and their allies–to create two categories for what is meant to be the most sacred relationship between two people.

If the state is meant to be involved in marriage at all, then it seems only right in a democracy like ours that all the rules of justice and equity should apply to this relationship, regardless of our individual or collective religious beliefs about who should marry. The feelings of religious communities, though worthy of consideration, cannot be definitive about a person’s civil rights. Many denominations, for example, don’t believe in divorce, yet states have clear procedures for the ending of a marriage. And there is no reason to privilege religious communities that oppose marriage equality over religious communities like Unitarian Universalists, which support marriage equality. Indeed, I often feel that I am restricted in practicing my faith as well as my calling when I cannot marry two people who love each other. It is, in the view of my religious community, a simple matter of civil rights–one reason that seven of the 14 plaintiffs in the case that brought marriage equality to Massachusetts were Unitarian Universalists.

I know all too well that other religious communities have used tradition and Scripture to proscribe the lives and futures of GBLT people. But I invite you to consider that even Scripture contains passages which suggest that old ideas about what God is said to require are subject to change. When I think about this issue, I reflect on The Book of Acts, Chapter 10, in which a Gentile named Cornelius wishes to be baptized, at a time when it was forbidden for Jews and Gentiles to have contact with one another. The apostle Peter has a dream “in which all manner of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air” descended from heaven on a large cloth, and God told him to “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter, you may recall, declined, saying that he had never eaten anything profane or unclean. It was then that the voice of God said to him: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” From that dream, Peter realizes that Gentiles are meant to be welcomed into God’s family, and he baptizes Cornelius.

Even if I had never read this passage in Scripture, however, I would have been persuaded of the need for marriage equality as a result of my congregational ministry. For seven years now, I have been pastor of a mid-size congregation in Manhattan with lesbian and gay members. There is only one difference between their lives and our lives–and it can be found in the constant complication, uncertainty and fear in which they must fashion relationships and families. I do not know how many straight couples would be capable of withstanding the additional stress and disrespect that lesbian and gay couples endure and still maintain a relationship. It’s my belief that no couple should have to find out.

My husband and I have been together for 34 years–24 of those years as husband and wife, and I can say without question that being married is different than not being married. It is the public, sacred commitment that marriage demands of its participants, a commitment supported by society and culture, that helps to shape and change those of us who enter into that union. Civil unions cannot and will not do that, and lesbian and gay people should not have to settle for a cheap imitation of a relationship that makes such a difference in human life.

My world is filled with gay and lesbian family and friends. They matter to me; their happiness and well being is important to me, to my husband and to my children. That’s why my sons booed when you said what you did this evening. Your suggested half-measure violates not only their religious sensibilities, but the sense of justice and fairness that draws them to your candidacy.

My younger son looked at me when the show was over and asked me, “Mom, are you still going to vote for Obama?”

Yes, if I get the chance, I will be voting for you. But I will also be working hard to make sure that the promise of America–a promise you speak of with great beauty and eloquence–will one day extend to everyone, no matter whom they choose to love. It is my prayer that, as you move ahead, you will one day do the same.

With every good wish,

The Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt

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I did get to meet Alice Walker while I was an undergraduate at Yale, when she spoke at an event sponsored by the African-American Studies department. She was so kind and encouraging to me that I made up my mind to write somehow, and though I haven’t yet figured out how to write those exquisitely beautiful short stories that make people want to cry, I have still lived a life filled with words, in part because of Alice. We’ve met and worked together periodically over the years, and she even wrote a first-class blurb for my memoir of several years ago, but we haven’t seen each other for some time.

Imagine my joy, then, to discover that she was an Obama supporter, and to read her most recent poetic and elegant words in support of him. They are addressed to all of us, but they will have special meaning to those of us who are women of color, and who find ourselves being sliced and diced by pundits and pollsters, and assaulted by white women demanding a blind and simplistic loyalty to gender that history cannot support. As usual, Alice, you get the job done in a way few of us can. Speak on, my sister!

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You don’t know me, though I know perhaps too much about you. In any case, let me introduce myself. I’m a pastor of a Unitarian Universalist congregation in New York. I’ve been married for 24 years, to a man who loves the vast majority of what I do. I’ve got two sons, who think having a mother who’s a minister is pretty cool. I’m African-American, just so you’ll know. I’ve been a Democrat all my life and a feminist (womanist, really) before there was a name for us. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a personal supporter of Barack Obama, and have been since he announced his candidacy, though members of my congregation span the political spectrum.

There’s really no reason for you to listen to me, but being a writer and a minister, that’s never stopped me from speaking. I feel I would be remiss in not being direct in my commentary about what is happening in this race for the Presidency. I would never presume to tell you not to run, even in these days when the doors of possibility are closing fast for your candidacy. You have every right to run for President, to make your case to the American people, to prove to those of us who are Democrats that you should be our party’s choice to run against John McCain. So far, however, the only case you have made to me is why I should not vote for you, even though I have never voted for a Republican in my life.

I guess I am part of that statistical anomaly being reported in the mainstream media; the roughly 20 percent of Democrats who say they will not vote for you if you wrest the nomination from Sen. Obama. You didn’t ask me, but let me tell you why I won’t vote for you, and why you have made my determination stronger with each passing day.

Let me begin with your relentless efforts to move the goalpost. You and your advisers continue to issue talking points about what it takes to make a viable nominee for the presidency, and those points have changed with each change in your political fortunes. This is fundamentally untrustworthy, and that is bad enough to call into question any candidate for the presidency. But though you have no hesitation about capitalizing on the issue of gender and the historic meaning of your candidacy, you continue to remain blind to the implications of race in this campaign (unless you view it as a liability for Sen. Obama).

There are few of us African-Americans who have not experienced the bitterness of playing by the rules, only to have others change those rules when it seems we will prevail. All of us who are drawn to Sen. Obama’s candidacy, and even those of us who might be drawn to yours, are paying close attention as you and your camp, faced with defeat, keep attempting to change the rules of this very serious game, as Sen. Obama meets every criteria for victory. He has won more states than you have; you respond that they haven’t been the right states. He has won more of the popular vote than you have; you respond that it’s the delegates that matter. He has won more delegates than you have; you respond that we need to let the superdelegates play out their role, as determined by the Democratic National Committee. He agrees to abide by the DNC rules about Florida and Michigan’s exclusion, just as you did at the start, before it became more expedient to change your mind when the political calculus suggested that those states might move you toward the nomination when nothing else could.

For all of your supposed awareness about our multicultural America, you are curiously blind to the implications of your current behavior. The notion that a qualified black man should take second place to a qualified white woman who is the wife of a powerful white man, (evidenced by your condescending suggestion that Sen. Obama might be your vice president) is anathema to any student of African American history. The coded message sent by your campaign harks back to the days of “Miss Ann,” the plantation owner’s wife who holds the power of life and death over the black people within her family’s reach. Your ambition for the White House notwithstanding, such sweeping power over the hearts and minds of African-Americans is long gone. I regret to say that your assumption of black allegiance or black gratitude is a dream that you (and apparently Pat Buchanan) have been having. I respectfully suggest that you wake up, Sen. Clinton, for if Barack Obama’s candidacy has done nothing else, it has cemented for an entire generation of African-Americans the reality of our own agency. No one has a right to our vote; no one can assume our loyalty, perhaps ever again. At long last, those of you who seek our votes will have to earn them. I must tell you that you have done little to earn those votes so far, especially when you have so egregiously and deliberately misstated so much about Sen. Obama’s campaign, its appeal, the man himself, and Sen. Obama’s relationships with others in the African-American community, particularly his relationship with his pastor, The Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

As a liberal religious minister, I am offended by the way in which you have used America’s ignorance about religion in general and about the black church in particular–both as a club to disable Sen. Obama’s campaign and as a stepping-stone to the nomination. I am offended that someone like yourself, who has over the years flaunted her close ties to African-American communities, would suddenly feign ignorance about the family status that black pastors frequently enjoy among members of their congregations, a status that is no less real because it is freely chosen. I am especially offended that you have not acknowledged the ways in which you (and nearly everyone else) has taken out of context the particulars of Rev. Wright’s sermon. Not only did he preach that sermon in relation to a particular text (Psalm 137), which he uses to warn his listeners against the dangerous escalation of violence and revenge, but he also “footnotes” the most contentious part of his sermon, clearly quoting a former US ambassador’s view of American history as his source. Even if you do not have access to YouTube, where a more contextual excerpt of Rev. Wright’s sermon is available for viewing, your staff certainly does. What’s more, this is not the first time you have attempted to use religion as a wedge in this contest. Why else would you have answered a question on “60 Minutes” about whether you believed Sen. Obama was a Muslim by saying “not as far as I know?”

But context and nuance do not seem to be what you or your campaign are seeking; it seems only scorched earth will do. There have been moments when I have wished that Sen. Obama would be more aggressive in his response to the distortions and vitriol issuing from your campaign. But I have changed my mind, especially after listening to his incredible speech on race in America, which brought me back to myself and reminded me why he is the candidate that best represents the future into which my family and I hope to live. I want someone leading this nation who isn’t afraid to ask me to be better tomorrow than I am today, who asks me to think past my own pain and recognize the pain of others. In much larger and more important ways, he is doing what I try to do in my congregation each week–encourage my people to connect to something greater and to reach for something higher than the immediate, petty things that consume so much of our time. And he is working hard to lead us by example, by modeling for us how we might be with one another, how we might be while under attack from the mean-spirited and short-sighted people and events that could distract us if we let them.

You have chosen a different path, and in all good conscience, I cannot follow you on it. Not only have I lost respect for the kind of presidency you might create, I have also lost faith that you could prevail against a right-wing machine who will use your own recent tactics against you, and with far more effectiveness. As it stands now, the poisonous level of the campaign you have waged has provided the right with ample material for every 527 group they can afford to fund, no matter who the nominee. Fueled by your sense of entitlement and your campaign’s lack of boundaries, you may have sabotaged the opportunity for progressive government in the United States for a generation. I hope with all my heart that I am wrong. But if I am right, I hope you will not fail to take at least as much credit as you have given yourself for the Northern Ireland Peace Process and your interventions in Bosnia.

With deep regret,

The Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt

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So let’s add one more reason to the pile: his stunning speech on race in America. I couldn’t see it live, and spent most of yesterday trying to find a site that hadn’t crashed from all the traffic. But I finally got to see it last night; what a brave, brilliant moment. It was a speech of such courage and compassion, such honesty and respect. I felt he articulated on my behalf the wound of slavery in a way no contemporary public person has in a generation. And in articulating it so clearly, and in its full context, he invited me and other African-Americans, to risk putting aside its memory for the sake of something more important: the future of my country. The brilliance of his speech was that he did not simply do the same old thing and ask black people to get over it. He asked us to own the truth of our experiences, to acknowledge the truth of the experiences of whites, and to recognize that some of what troubles us is our collective ignorance about race , about history and about one another. I know that he will have disappointed some Latino/Latina and Asian people by seeming to focus on the black/white aspect of the racial divide. But I believe that such focus is entirely appropriate, because I believe slavery and its legacy in the United States is our country’s primary, deepest festering wound.

To me, the least interesting thing about the speech was the ostensible reason for giving it: an opportunity for Obama to reject/denounce/decry the words of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Watching the news coverage of Rev. Wright over the past several days has been a textbook example of religious illiteracy in the American media. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. It’s perfectly obvious that most reporters and commentators don’t go to church/synagogue/mosque, so they don’t have any idea of what a relationship with your pastor/rabbi/iman can be like. It’s just as obvious that none of them have a clue about the black church in general or black theology in particular. Mad props to Chris Walton for his brilliant Philocrites post of a few days ago on this very subject; you go, Chris!

Most telling of all, for me anyway, is the complete lack of cultural understanding about this “rejecting/denouncing” business that seems to have such currency in the public arena. At the risk of making too broad a statement about African-American values, and with the full knowledge that I don’t speak for all black people, let me say that we don’t do the “rejecting/denouncing” things with family. We just don’t do it. Nearly every black person I know has family members and close friends who have said and done all kinds of uncool things, even criminal things. Every one of us that I know of have been clear about disapproving of the offending party’s behavior. But all those folks are still part of our respective circles, even amid all their imperfections and failures.

When I was growing up, I was taught that you don’t turn your back on family, no matter what they’ve done. (Sociologists have long documented the incorporation of good friends and mentors into the structures of black family life. In studies, such people are referred to as “fictive kin.” When I was growing up, we just called such people our “play sisters/brothers/cousins/uncles/aunts.”) So when Obama talked about Wright being like an uncle to him, it made complete sense to me, especially considering that Wright performed the Obamas’ wedding and baptized their children. You don’t stop going to your family’s house for Thanksgiving because your family members start acting out, do you? (In my house, the only question on Thanksgiving is: who’s turn is it to act out this year?) Your people are your people. Period. You can hate what they say and do, but at their core, you belong to them and they belong to you. This posture is, among other things, Universalist theology 101.

As always, nobody wanted to talk about anything else but that speech today. The only trouble is, today is the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and so many of us seemed resigned to it. I like to think it’s because we are waiting for November to remedy this tragedy. It would be nice to think that Americans could carry on more than one serious national debate at a time, wouldn’t it?

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But I digress. The studios in Secaucus housed a host of different NBC programming, and other stars from the GE firmament were almost always in orbit around the place. Some of them, like John Gibson, were fixtures; others were just passing through, like Brian Williams, who was working for “big NBC” at the time ( and thought for some reason that the studio ought to be 60 degrees!!!) Still others were off my radar screen, in part because they were working on things I had no interest in whatsoever–like sports. Keith Olbermann was one of those sports people I used to see all the time in the studios. He liked (ick!) football, so I never paid him any mind at all. Besides, I was trying to figure out how not to choke Ann Coulter while we were on the air together….

Fast forward what seems like a thousand years, to the advent of “Countdown.” When I first saw that Keith Olbermann was anchoring this little show, I chose to watch it because I couldn’t imagine how or why “a jock like him” would be doing prime-time news. God really does have a wicked sense of humor, though, because what began as a point of curiosity in our home has become a ritual, as well as a bittersweet reminder that people think they know a lot more about folks than they actually do. Children doing homework in our house at 8 p.m. have to leave the living room if they need quiet time, because at 8 pm, Keith is on–no exceptions. And even my 11 year old can do a perfect imitation of Olbermann’s faux-eerie voice announcing “Today’s Worst Person in the World!”

My admiration for Keith, though, is less an issue of entertainment than the refreshing sound of honest and heartfelt feelings, combined with actual news and genuine facts. (The only person on television even remotely like him was the underappreciated CNN cult figure Aaron Brown, who eventually had to make way for society journalist Anderson Cooper. I resented Cooper for a long time as the person who contributed to Brown’s departure from CNN, but that was unfair. Besides, the post-Katrina interview Cooper conducted with Sen. Mary Landrieu earned him mad props in the McNatt household; Bob and I were sitting in front of the TV when boyfriend went *off!*)

Okay, I digressed again. So: once upon a time, our elected political leaders acted as the appropriate outlet for moral outrage, but that time is gone. Thank heaven for Keith, who is smart and snarky, relentless and refreshingly patriotic in all the ways you might expect, and some you might not. In my house, we live for the “Special Comment,” a minutes-long monologue, rife with historical references and thinly veiled contempt for our country’s leadership in times of crisis. Last night, for example, Keith tore Hillary a new one over her racist pandering and support of Geraldine Ferarro. In all that he reports and comments upon, Keith Olbermann represents the single, bright, shining light in an otherwise shadowy morass of news coverage that amounts to pandering and bull@(^.

One night, after he had gone all the way off, (but in a good way!!!!!!) I remarked to my husband that Keith Olbermann had the smarts, skepticism and love for America that singled him out as a first-class candidate for Unitarian Universalism. “But he probably wouldn’t know us if he fell over us,” I sighed, remembering my halcyon days as an intern in the Montclair church when the class-act actor Andre Braugher and his family, fresh from many seasons of Homicide, joined the congregation even as Bob was debuting as director of the children’s holiday pageant.

So imagine my feelings as I Googled Olbermann one night for an unrelated reason and found the words, “Unitarian Universalism.”

Oooh, Lord, have mercy.

I can’t find out how true this speculation is. The closest I have come to definite information are a couple of blogs that assert that KO was raised UU, but has no current affiliation. Guess who doesn’t care?

Message to Keith: if you are heir to our liberal religious tradition, come on home, dear one. You have been living our faith and fighting the good fight, and you will need to renew yourself for all that lies ahead. If you are not part of our free faith, let me introduce you: www.4thu.org. Either way, we hope to see you soon. And thank you for all that you have done, and continue to do, to keep faith and hope alive.

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The part of me that is feeling pastoral at this moment may be willing to cut Gerry some slack because she may be too old to know any better. As a white woman of a certain age, Ferraro’s political and personal awareness on issues of race preceded the work of women like Peggy MacIntosh, the uber-white-ally whose landmark work on white privilege laid the foundation for genuine anti-racist work a generation ago. Ferraro, on the other hand, is one of those women who is stuck in the monolithic view of white feminist privilege, a woman who may very well believe that being a woman is such a singular disadvantage and burden that all others pale (you’ll pardon the inadvertent pun) beside it.

I remember standing more than 20 years ago in the newsroom of the Wall Street Journal, where I worked as a copy editor, on the day that Ferraro was named Walter Mondale’s vice presidential candidate. I stood there as a black woman and cried, imagining then that I had been privileged to live at a time when a white woman would be seen as a creditable vice presidential candidate, and imagining that my day might one day come. I remember Election Day, when I voted for her, even though it turned out that she would lose. I even remember telling others not to blame her, years later, because her husband was involved in less than transparent financial dealings. All those moments were a long time ago.

Now I am so ashamed that I ever allowed myself to be seduced into believing that she and I could make common cause; for white women like Ferraro and Clinton, common cause means men and women of color playing adoring handmaidens to them while they take the lead–even when they don’t deserve it. I am reminded of nothing so much as an old movie (by my sons’ standards) called “The Competition,” with Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving. Dreyfuss and Irving, concert pianists, fall in love during a cut-throat piano competition, which Irving wins. But winning the competition has a drastic effect on Dreyfuss, who suddenly finds himself faced with an unthinkable reality that threatens their relationship. Even though they had made plans to be together before the competition was decided, everything threatened to change once the Amy Irving character won. As Dreyfuss said in the movie’s most arresting scene, “It never crossed my mind that you were better than me.”

Ferraro/Clinton have worked hard for what they have, just as Dreyfuss did in this sleeper film. But it is obvious that a subtle combination of entitlement and racism has fueled their every cynical move, especially as Obama’s delegate lead grows ever larger. (Anyone who’s driven Routes 80 or 81 in Pennsylvania can testify to how well Ferraro’s rank innuendo–and Clinton’s tepid denials–will play among certain folks there.) Obama’s skills, timing, and (perhaps too much) grace under pressure have had a synergistic effect which neither the two of them, nor any of their supporters, had counted on when this long race began. Under other circumstances (before they started showing their collective a@#??, perhaps) I would have found a way to affirm Clinton’s historic and cynically pragmatic campaign. But it is far too unattractive for me to cooperate with a group of people who are so amazed that a black man can accomplish what they, so far, have not been able to manage, that they have resorted to slander, innuendo, condescension and the cheesiest kind of racism.

One day, I will turn on my television, and a black woman will be running for President of the United States. I used to think I would never live to see such a day. But I have been blessed enough to see several things I was sure would never happen in my lifetime: Nelson Mandela walking out of prison; Geraldine Ferraro being named as a vice presidential candidate; Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton being the last two people standing in a Democratic presidential nomination process. I am only 52 years old, and I believe in God, so I think Time and The Holy are on my side. In the meantime, I am left speechless by the horrific spectacle of the Clinton campaign revealing their racist underbelly. I only wish I could tell you how surprised I am by it all.

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But that is probably because I have been in denial. Monday evening, even in the face of the looming Eliot Spitzer scandal, I found myself incredulous in the face of her unwavering ego and gall, as Clinton and her campaign staff continue to float the ludicrous idea that Obama should play second fiddle to Senator Clinton’s ambition. Dream ticket indeed!

Let’s reverse this, shall we? Hillary has more of the popular vote; more delegates; better poll numbers against the Republican opponent. Then Barack, campaigning against her, decides that he might be willing, under the appropriate circumstances, to offer her the vice-presidency. What might women and feminist groups say in response?

I’m betting they don’t thank Obama for being condescending and sexist. So: how many standards should there be, and who should uphold them? I am finally glad I am not married to Barack Obama tonight, because I cannot account for how I would be behaving right now if I were Michelle Obama. For every person who wonders how and why it is that so few black women are card-carrying members of the Let’s Make Hillary President Club, keep watching Hillary and her husband–and remember how they respond when black people or their allies are not sufficiently grateful for the privilege of basking in the Clintonian aura. Remember President Clinton and former Best Friend Forever Lani Guinier? No? Let me help you with that. Think back to the work that both Clintons did to pass the 1996 Welfare Reform Act–an act that disproportionally affected women of color. The Clintons’ combined support so outraged their former allies Peter Edelman (Marian’s husband) and Mary Jo Bane that they resigned from their positions at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Remember Clinton’s mistaken eruption all over Jesse Jackson in the 1990′s, when Clinton thought he wasn’t sufficiently committed to a Clinton presidency?

Why should I link Hillary to her husband’s capacity to betray any black person within his orbit? Because she has spent weeks attempting to convince us that being married to the president gives her the experience to be president. In the words of an old friend, “you have to learn to take the bitter with the better.” There is a level of entitlement within the Clinton campaign that is truly amazing to behold. But she’s not entitled to my vote–or my respect.

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