Posted on 01/17/2006 1:41:59 AM PST by rdb3
Martin Luther King Jr. fought four decades ago to free black Americans from the legacy of slavery. Yesterday, Senator Clinton compared the Republican leadership of the current House of Representatives to the very idea the civil rights leader dedicated his life to fighting. "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run - it has been run like a plantation," she said. "You know what I'm talking about."
Mrs. Clinton, who was addressing a packed house at the Reverend Al Sharpton's annual Martin Luther King Day event at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, continued: "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard. The Senate's not that bad, but it's been difficult. It's been difficult."
Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Clinton's press secretary, Philippe Reines, declined to comment on the senator's allusion to slavery, but he said she was simply discussing "a top-down system that is fundamentally at odds with how the people's House should operate." Mrs. Clinton's reference to one of the darkest periods of American history drew applause, but some national political observers said yesterday that they doubt the comparison of mainstream politicians to slave owners will help the senator win broad-based support as she tests the political waters for a possible presidential campaign.
"The use of the term plantation is foolish, and my guess is that she will live to regret this," a University of Virginia political analyst, Larry Sabato, said. "She's playing the race card."
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), with her usual intuitive sense of misdirection, likened the Congress to a plantation, presumably during slavery years when Democrats ruled the south. It's a bit politically incorrect but to some extent she is right.
Congress often acts as if it were the master and the rest of us are slaves. They set overseers over us and rule every aspect of our economic and social lives. Certainly we are not free. Like slaves, what is not required is prohibited.
Senator Clinton forgets that she is one of the people living in the plantation house. So what's her point?
this is also a bad definition of slavery
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