Honest mistake, right? (Updated)

I think we can all agree that race baiting, whatever its origin in each individual case, is poisoning the well in the Democratic primary. It’s the issue that just won’t die; the one that needs a stake through its heart – ASAP, please.

Consider this quote from a TIME.com piece:

Obama’s impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state’s voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama’s candidacy pushed turnout to record levels – a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that “is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table.”

But that’s not the cute part.

The “cute part” was the title of the piece, which has been changed.

This link shows you a screenshot of the piece as originally titled.

In the current environment, you cannot tell me that that is an accident.

Well, you could tell me that….but I’d ask you what you were smoking.

Contact: [email protected]

‘Cuz I’m gonna.

Enough of this crap.

27 comments

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    • Nordic on January 27, 2008 at 19:30

    Would you like to tell us what it said?

    • CJB on January 27, 2008 at 19:35

    I read the first link and thought, “I can’t believe kestral is upset about – what? – the word ‘race’?”

    I saw that original headline last night and said to my husband, “Rejiggers? How far did they have to go for that word?”

    It’s not a racist term. But that’s certainly the direction in which it sent me.  I actually searched around to see if I could find a racist inference.  Nope.  But it’s just such a reach when any number of words work so much more easily on the ear and on the eye. I mean, apart from the potential crap the word brings up, it was just an awkward and poorly written headline the first time.

    Too wierd.

    • srkp23 on January 27, 2008 at 19:46

    Lit up a doob just for a couple of puffs before going out for a walk. (Jump Cut): Still haven’t gone out for a walk, and now I’ve only got a roach. 🙂

    • srkp23 on January 27, 2008 at 19:46

    Lit up a doob just for a couple of puffs before going out for a walk. (Jump Cut): Still haven’t gone out for a walk, and now I’ve only got a roach. 🙂

  1. Plus, we’re still are wondering if Barack Obama is still the Black candidate.

    Not sayin’, just askin’.

    Thanks for you support.

    Billary

    • plf515 on January 27, 2008 at 21:08

    unless it’s to gather info about the enemy

    I mean, not only is it right-wing, but it’s so moronic!

    I do read the Economist, which is much more conservative than I am, but at least it’s an informed conservatism.

  2. that the media feels the need to stir the pot on this one, and make this ‘race’ about something it shouldnt be about to engage people??…

    …or that theyre probably right??

  3. …of “mistake”–they are in over their heads & need some immediate basic remedial journalism, English/ linguistics, and history classes.  If they wrote that bizarrely inappropriate headline on purpose–they should be called out for being idiots.  

    • pico on January 27, 2008 at 22:40

    It’s not like Time hasn’t used this word in articles before, and recently at that (check the first line of this article, from their Best Websites of 2007 roundup.  Apparently someone at Time likes the word “rejiggers”).  

    So I do think it’s possible it was just the same writer or copy editor who uses that word from time to time, and wasn’t thinking.  It’s also possible it wasn’t, and the word was chosen for the reasons you think.  

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