things I love right now

Iris Chacon 1970s film shown in Spain, includes the lovely voice-over to give her a fake Castillian accent.

The First Rule of Being a Colonial Exploiter: Know Your Colonies

I am sitting here after work, trying to unwind while I wait for the results in Ohio, Texas, hoping Obama wins...and my blood pressure went way up when my sister shared with me the article below. Basically, a politician in Orlando, Florida, home to almost 300,000 Boricuas, said that we are "foreign citizens." WTF??!?! Is this the one nation in history who is so fucking ignorant that they do not realize that A. they have colonies, and B. if they do, they do not know the most basic information about said colonies!! If I had a dime for every time someone educated, mind you, asked me about my citizenship, the currency we use, and other such stupid questions, I would be rocking a heinous comb-over and a smirk, that's right Donald Trump wealthy.

By the way Ginny Brown-Waite really is the actual name of the racist and stupid U.S. Representative though it sounds almost like a camp pseudonym for a bi-racial drag queen, right?

Here is the article:

Víctor Manuel Ramos | Sentinel Staff Writer
February 29, 2008

BROOKSVILLE — Ginny Brown-Waite, the U.S. representative who sparked controversy by calling Puerto Ricans "foreign citizens," was criticized again Thursday for telling a group of protesters to go to the local aquatic park "if the group needs to cool off."

Dozens of Puerto Ricans from Orlando and other parts of the state converged on Brooksville's small downtown Thursday morning to speak against the congresswoman who had offended them by referring to people from the U.S. territory as "foreign citizens."

Brown-Waite was not at her district office when the protesters arrived, but she left a written statement that offered them "a warm welcome," then suggested that "if the group needs to cool off" they should go watch the mermaids at Weeki Wachee — an invitation protesters said they found offensive and dismissive of their concerns.

"I recommend that they head down the road to Weeki Wachee for a fun afternoon at our water park," Brown-Waite said in her statement, adding: "It is disappointing that the Orlando partisan race hustlers who traveled to Hernando County today have chosen to continue the politics of division."

Brown-Waite, a Republican, also characterized the participation of Democrats in the rally as engaging in "race-based hysteria."

"She is insulting when she [tells] us to go down to Weeki Wachee, as if we were kids," said José A. Fernández, a rally organizer who is president of the Orange County chapter of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Florida.

"We are not kids. We are all grown-ups and we are very serious about what we are doing, and she should take it seriously too."

The crowd of about 70 protesters — mostly Puerto Ricans and some African-American supporters — said Thursday's comments by Brown-Waite added insult to injury. Brown-Waite initially angered Puerto Ricans when her office issued a news release in January about Congress' economic-stimulus package. In the process she called the people of Puerto Rico and Guam — both U.S. territories whose residents are U.S. citizens — "foreign citizens."

"She needs to get her facts straight. She needs to understand that we are not going to be her whipping boys or girls," said Samuel López, a Melbourne activist and a protest organizer.

Protesters marched down Brooksville's Main Street, stopping before the congresswoman's office as they shouted ¡Viva Puerto Rico! and "Ginny Waite has gotta go!" They also carried American and Puerto Rican flags, sang patriotic Puerto Rican hymns and carried signs with various versions of the same message: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

"This movement is a movement for respect," Ralph Morales, an activist from New York, told the crowd.

He cited the community's political strength, with more than 600,000 Puerto Ricans living in Florida. More than 280,000 live in Metro Orlando. "We have the capacity to change the political scene in the state of Florida," Morales said.

A sole counter-protester shouted the demonstration was "much ado about nothing!"

The man, who identified himself as A.M. Sevier of Brooksville, told protesters they had no claim in his town.

"They are a territory. How many states are there? Fifty. Are they one of them? No," Sevier said.

López said the protest was just the beginning, and predicted more demonstrations of Puerto Ricans' political power.

Víctor Manuel Ramos can be reached at vramos@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6186.

'Viva Puerto Rico'

See video of the protest by Puerto Ricans on Thursday near the Brooksville office of U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite: OrlandoSentinel.com/politicalpulse

More articles


http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-prprotest2908feb29,0,2090041.story

random things I love right now

The satirical blog Stuff White People Like, which I have discovered today and am LoL as I scroll through it's dead-on descriptions of objects, attitudes, and locations beloved by "white people." The only quibble I have is that perhaps the blog should be called "Stuff Privileged/Upper Middle Class/Rich White People Like." But for any New Yorker in their 30s-40s (am not sure if that is where the blogger is from, but based on the content, I assume so) it is so familiar and thus hilarious! The only thing is, if you start to read the comments, you might get a little freaked out because you will find that a *lot* of people have NO sense of humor, take the blog literally and generally fulfill the stereotype of the dour, politically-correct US-white person!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

While we're on the subject of "white people" and not to be hating on the white folks (though we know I do a fair amount of kvetching here) but I am half "white" after all (unless of course you believe that Africa begins at the Pyrenees as I believe Napoleon said) so here is the link to the White Folks Guide to the NYC Transit subway map. A hilarious parody that omits the stations for areas that are not (yet) gentrified. It amuses me to see it's outdated, because my stops are left out.

Nonetheless, here is a big shout out to whoever designed this site!

http://www.streeterseidell.com/whitefolksguide.jpg

If you LoL when I riff on ridiculous but true news items, you will want to check out the fabulous FARK which offers outrageous news content of all types, it's like reading an exquisite corpse, things linked to each other with no rhyme nor reason, completely surreal and disconnected.

http://www.fark.com/

Finally, a big shout out to the blogger in Jacksonville, FL who like me is a Walter Mercado fan!

ttp://jacksonvilleconfidential.blogspot.com/2006/11/biography-of-day-walter-mercado.html

Native Informants, Cultural Brokers, and the Marco Polo/Christopher Columbus Syndrome

The "Native Informant" in the artworld has been described as the local who is regarded as having insider access and knowledge merely by virtue of their national origin. As has been stated elsewhere, this role is similar to that played by the "native" that assists an anthropologist doing field work, acting as a translator of language and cultural norms. This position of albeit limited privilege is enjoyed particularly in situations where a so-called mainstream institution/collector seeks to access the "right" person to help them to represent a formerly excluded "minority" group. Such notions also dovetail with cultural essentialism whose flip side is of course racist stereotypes because both imply that one has unchangeable innate traits that are derived from a place of origin, ethnicity or gender. Often some of us will willingly adopt the position of "Native Informant" as a way to disseminate information about our culture in contexts that formerly excluded its production, others seek to gain access to the artworld. The "Cultural Broker" is a related role, one that exploits the "Native Informant" paradigm to their own ends, to be a player in the global art market/cultural industries.

Problematic is the fact that art historians, curators, collectors and others may view areas outside the narrow Eucocentric canon in broad geographic terms, the better to quickly understand them so "Africa" or "Latin America" rather than individual countries, cities, artists, movements, historical periods, etc. etc. etc. What may get lost is that someone from a particular country needs to go to school and get work experience as much as the next person, and that the person who has the expertise may not in fact be of the same national origin as the artists she/he works on as a scholar. Why couldn't a white person be the leading expert on art from Cuba, say? Yet given the PC identity politics that still reign in the USA, where one is expected to represent a Category before being viewed as a person (unless of course one is White, in which case one is a person and not part of any category) so one has to "speak for" Latinos, African Americans, etc. An example of the latter was the "Global Feminisms" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, where women from Non-Western countries, Latinas, African American or Asian American women among others were relegated to a section about "Identity" as if Whiteness, Westernness and Europeanness were not identities and as if that is the only subject the "other" women can/should talk about in their work.

In the globalized art world there are related categories that intersect with the Native Informant and Cultural Broker, citing Gerardo Mosquera's term the Marco Polo Syndrome and also one may refer to it as the Christopher Columbus Syndrome. The terms describe the activities of certain individuals in the artworld. The latter two are often white, European or US men that travel to a country not their own and enact behavior that could be regarded as parodic of the Ernest Hemingway model except translated to the nerdy pursuits of the artworld. Described in gossipy artworld accounts as intrepid explorers traveling to remote regions in helicopters and the like, their junkets with corrupt local administrators and their sexual exploits with exotic native women (I am inspired by a particularly lurid set of accounts about one curator/journalist), such Marco Polos/Christopher Columbuses enact the fantasies of frustrated nerdy intellectuals.

And all of us want to see ourselves in a more glamorous light. Female curators getting loans of designer dresses, the better for the latter to get product placement in VOGUE or artforum diary. Trips abroad to billionaire collectors' homes, which I myself have breathlessly described in Vanity Fair/HOLA language to riveted colleagues, all of us wishing to escape our normally bureaucratic experience.

And although others will most likely have been researching, writing and curating in this allegedly remote country for many many years, the arrival of this representative of the Metropolis suddenly brings this nation's art into prominence, puts them on the map. For many many years scholars, and curators both from a particular country and outside of it, struggled to document the art there, ignored by the art market and cultural centers of Europe and the US. Until, suddenly, a series of factors converge and this formerly "remote" country becomes "fresh" "sexy" and indispensable, the hottest new market - such as China, or Argentina or India, or Brazil.

Perhaps assisted by eager Native Informants or Cultural Brokers, the Marco Polo/Christopher Columbus arrive (belatedly) to such countries. The latter due to their sense of privilege and entitlement believe that they have "discovered" this country's art and return to the Metropolis as "the expert and go-to scholar/curator/writer/interlocutor/fixer." Even better if he gains a "walking dictionary" or native girlfriend, as one man described his ex to me once.

Of course there is always a flip side, for example when a "non-native" has spent decades in a "remote" area working on learning its language, culture, and art history but as soon as this region becomes "hot" then "Native Informants" who may have far less knowledge and experience of their own culture of origin suddenly become the go-to "experts" in the West, eager to have not only the exotic but even better: the exotic (re)presented by an "authentic exotic Native Informant."

For more on this topic:

Miriam Basilio "Field Notes from a `Native Informant,'" in None of the Above, Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists (Hartford: Real Art Ways in collaboration with the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, 2005).

Oguibe, Olu, "Prologue," in his The Culture Game (University of Minnesotta Press, 2004).

Ponce de Leon, Carolina, "Random Trails for the Noble Savage," in Gerardo Mosquera, Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America (MIT Press, 1996)

Ramirez, Mari Carmen "Brokering Identities: Art Curators and the Politics of Representation," in Thinking about Exhibitions. ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairn (London: Routledge, 1996), 21--38.

Yang, Alice Yang, Why Asia? Contemporary Asian & Asian American Art. Edited by Jonathan Hay and Mimi Young. (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998)

To Have and to Hold?

Antonio Berni. (Argentine, 1905-1981). New Chicago Athletic Club. 1937. Oil on canvas. 6' 3/4" x 9' 10 1/4" (184.8 x 300.4 cm). Inter-American Fund.

This past weekend I attended a very enlightening symposium organized by the Frick Center for the History of Collecting in America "Turning Points in Modern Art Collecting 1913-present." The brilliant Rob Storr, one of the curators I most admire, bracketed the talks presenting a keynote and moderating a discussion at the conclusion of the panels. In his lecture, "To Have and to Hold," he described the Ganzs' attitudes to collecting as a pointed contrast to the investment-oriented approach common to today's speculator buyers. He reminded us that the "history of collecting is a social history" (which is why it fascinates me) and referred to MoMA's conservative policy on de-accessions when he was working there.

It was this section on changing taste that thrilled me most as he argued that Greenberg's idea of "quality" was a "homogenizing term" which he has spent years challenging, since it has created an idea of a "mainstream" which has led to a "cleaning up operation." He cited his exhibition "Modern Art Despite Modernism" for me one of the best MoMA catalogues which continues to inspire me in my writing and teaching. Among other things, Storr referred to the works he included there as "prematurely Post-Modern" and "modern art that was not Modernist."

When I heard the phrases "prematurely Post-Modern," and "cleaning up operation," my mind immediately went to the Americans who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic, who came home and were persecuted by the US government during the McCarthy era, often prohibited from fighting in WW2, from having passports, and a long etcetera, for being "premature anti-Fascists." I think the political analogy might not have been accidental, given the political references and figurative content of much of the art he selected for his show, and which is now considered "dead wood" (this is a "technical" term actually used within MoMA) since it does not conform to the formalist Modernist canon. He mentioned collectors who championed art that was not considered of interest until recently, naming Ron Lauder and Patty Cisneros. I must add that ALL of the papers were very helpful and shed light on various aspects of the history of exhibiting, collecting, the art market and art criticism and I do hope that they publish the talks.

As I said, during the concluding discussion the issue of de-accessioning came up again. Rob spoke about a museum's collection as its "historical memory," as a "history of taste," as a "cultural value that is greater than the sum of its parts," The question, what happens when a museum sells unpopular works was raised. I was left wanting to ask if any of the panelists, particularly Rob, had any ideas on what could be done to stop these rash de-accessions from taking place. I wanted to ask about the irony that I see in the fact that given the astronomical prices of contemporary art, museums feel forced to sell modern "masterpieces" in order to pay for newer works (ie. an early modernist work to buy a post-war American one by a living artist). Linked to this is the irony that as long as the so-called "dead wood" has no market value, it is safe in the archive that is the collection storage (ie. Latin American artists of the 1930s-1950s). However, once the canon is revised, a museum can now sell off things that are not to today's taste (in the case of Latin American art, today's canon is 1950s-1960s Southern Cone Constructivist-related abstraction, and, to a lesser extent, Conceptual practices), because today these 1930s-50s figurative works do have a value on the art market.

Finally, I wanted to ask, since de-accessions are difficult to prove because in many cases they are sold privately and not by auctions as is the generally accepted ethical manner to proceed (but as has been reported, not all museums proceed in this manner). For MoMA, the traces that remain may be found in Barr's Painting and Sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, old catalogues, the Registrar or Curatorial files, photos in the Archives, or visitors' memories. There is also the booklet produced by Michael Asher for the exhibition The Museum as Muse, for which he conducted the kind of painstaking research needed to re-construct which works have in fact been sold, and an annotated and expanded copy of which is kept in the Painting and Sculpture department curatorial files - an indication of the difficulty of this type of research even for staff - demonstrates how the public trust is not being kept by museums when they de-accession largely in secret.

Also ironically, Glenn Lowry gave a talk at his alma mater, Williams, a few days ago, the article from the University newspaper is below. According to the article, Lowry discussed the MoMA's renewed focus on the art of our time, contemporary art, and its need to constantly reinvent itself. The quotes below particularly fascinated me.

Taking on the position of the sixth director of the MoMA in 1995, Lowry he said that being museum director at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium allowed him the liberty to redefine the definition of what art is “modern.” For his answer, Lowry quoted the mission statement of the MoMA, stating that modern art is “the progressive, the challenging and the difficult.”


Isn't the art that Rob discussed in "Modern Art Despite Modernism" precisely "progressive (politically), challenging (as it both challenges Greenbergian dogma, leads us to consider another, broader, notion of taste proposed by Barr himself), and is today quite difficult?

And finally, I find it ironic and devastating that he should make reference to a notion of "undermin[ing] its own core ideals."

In this shifting world, Lowry sees the MoMA’s role as that of a “disruptive innovator” that must strive to stay current and open to change. “If the MoMA is going to remain disruptive as an institution, it’s only going to do so by being willing to […] undermine its own core ideals,” Lowry said.


Is anyone out there asking what exactly is being sold by museums? Some know but have no evidence that isn't confidential. So how can the public know where the works are now?

_____________________________
Lowry redefines modern art
Christopher Fox - Staff Writer

Often misunderstood and generally underappreciated, the broad genre of modern art occupies an uncomfortable and largely inaccessible space in the cultural landscape. Glenn Lowry ’76, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, expressed similar sentiments in his lecture, “Pursuing the Modern,” which he delivered to a packed audience in the Brooks-Rogers Auditorium on Monday evening. This lecture, the first in the Class of 1960’s Art Scholars of the art department lecture series “Art in 4 Dimensions,” was a compelling dialogue about both the MoMA and the state of the art world today.

After graduating from Williams, Lowry got his M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University, and went on to work as a medieval Islamic art historian, published multiple books and served as director of several museums.

To Lowry, directing the MoMA poses a unique challenge of maintaining accessibility and relevancy for esoteric subject matter, allowing it to be “engaging and interesting to a local audience.”

In particular, he cited the difficulty of expressing the principles the MoMA is founded upon: “Modern art is every bit as important as art of the past,” he said. It is not only the collection that manifests this idea, Lowry said, but also the space where people see and experience the collection.

Initially, the MoMA had no competition in the market for modern art, and between the enthusiastic Rockefeller family and the brilliant Alfred Barr, the museum was able to collect a number of notable pieces that at the time were truly “progressive.”

Taking on the position of the sixth director of the MoMA in 1995, Lowry he said that being museum director at the beginning of a new century and a new millennium allowed him the liberty to redefine the definition of what art is “modern.” For his answer, Lowry quoted the mission statement of the MoMA, stating that modern art is “the progressive, the challenging and the difficult.”

This definition can be directly linked to four major changes in the art world, detailed by Lowry, all of which relate to diversification and expansion of modern art and its audience. First, there is no singular epicenter to the art world, but rather multiple locations where creativity flourishes and art originates.

Additionally, the audience for modern art has grown so much as to double the number of visitors to the MoMA since the beginning of Lowry’s tenure as director.

Lowry also attributed the increasing popularity of modern art to fairs that encourage flexibility in appreciating the artwork, as well as the mobility of artists to have a more global perspective in their creations. The combination of these factors has resulted in museums like the MoMA trying to appeal to these audiences and provide them with a more diverse and “non-hierarchical” experience.

In this shifting world, Lowry sees the MoMA’s role as that of a “disruptive innovator” that must strive to stay current and open to change. “If the MoMA is going to remain disruptive as an institution, it’s only going to do so by being willing to […] undermine its own core ideals,” Lowry said.

Because, as he explained, “it is the present which informs our understanding of the immediate past,” museums need to “make space, intellectually and physically” for new art in a way that does not diminish the importance of what was achieved in the past.

In order to do this, Lowry said, “the very space of the museum needs to be rethought to make room for these new ways of thinking.” Ultimately, Lowry expressed his hope to the audience that the MoMA will remain a place where art and its audience can have a “fair exchange” – a place where “the viewer has to come to his or her own terms with that object, and the object makes the best argument for itself.”

Lowry ended his talk by quoting a remark of Gertrude Stein: “A museum can either be modern or a museum but not both at the same time.” “Our challenge,” Lowry encouraged the audience, “is to prove her wrong.”

http://www.williamsrecord.com/wr/?section=arts&view=article&id=9579

Copyright © The Williams Record 2000 - 2007. All Rights Res

Tyrants will fall?

Late yesterday afternoon I saw the Carole Vogel article (link is below), announcing the departure of Thomas Krens, in my email inbox and I must say I was surprised. Vogel is a bit like PRAVDA, she announces the things museums want to announce, yet she does raise questions from time to time. In any case, I thought Krens had dodged the bullet. Imagining the perspective of someone who had once lived under a dictator's yoke, I had waited for John Elderfield or better yet, Glenn Lowry to depart MoMA. The former is "retiring" while the latter has re-upped for FIVE more years. There are at last count at least two dozen museums seeking new Directors, so perhaps the MoMA trustees decided that the devil they know is better than.... Many observers had been convinced that Lowry was to go to the Met, but apparently the messy situation involving congressional inquiry into "bonuses" added to his obscenely huge paycheck scared off the museum. Recent conversations I have had on and off the record as well as articles about the recent history of both the Gug and MoMA have led me to begrudgingly question some of my, conventional, wisdom - the commas of course to indicate that I was parroting the prevailing artworld orthodoxy.

What if, as many claim, Lowry was brought in to clean house? If his authoritarian methods and the ruthless back-stabbing, paranoia, territorial competitiveness and lack of collegiality that prevail in some (but not all!!!) curatorial departments since he joined the museum are actually a reaction against his efforts to change the Museum's culture, and not an outgrowth of his highly hierarchical corporate management model? On the one hand, the museum has become more and more corporate, but one could argue that so have most museums, and this one is the most powerful so by extension it should be the most corporate, especially given the Forbes 500 composition of its board. Might some of this corporate re-organization be part of his mandate to make the museum more centralized and to dilute the power of individual Chief Curators (who many have compared to dictators of small Eastern Bloc nations) by creating a massive layer of middle-managers in administrative departments that are organizationally above the curatorial departments like some kind of bureaucratic superstructure?

And what about Krens? Hated for his crass corporate rhetoric and brash marketing strategies designed to promote the museum as a global franchise, despised for popularly-successful exhibitions and financially risky undertakings, other museum curators and directors gleefully cited him as the example of the ethical quagmire museums have become. But might he have been, with all of his admittedly problematic fiscal tactics, a convenient scapegoat for those who perhaps with more subtlety, emulated many of his activities? Have not most museums privileged crowd-pleasing exhibitions over other programming? And what is wrong with crowd-pleasing exhibitions, if they are also scholarly as is the case with many organized by the Guggenheim. For every "Art of the Motorcycle" you have a "Russia!" or a "Norman Rockwell" and many others that shed light on less examined areas of art history that other museums ignore. And as far as the fiscal issues: many museums have created branding/franchising agreements with museums abroad? MoMA and Mori to cite just one, and Vogel mentions the Tate and Louvre's recent activities as well, are examples of such agreements, and look at what is happening in the UAE..... Krens was perhaps too transparent, by using words like "branding," his arrogance led him to be brash, but isn't it better to see someone be frank about their strategy over the hypocrisy demonstrated by many other museum directors doing similar things?

What about the Guggenheim's scholarly focus, survey and historiographic exhibitions featuring their collection and the institutional history of the museum? Few talk about those programs which may attract less critical attention or even perhaps attendance, but one could argue that their curators have more opportunity to work with and research their collection than the hypercompetitive, hierarchical and scleorotic MoMA, whose collection after MoMA 2000 has gone back to business as usual? There, junior curatorial staff no longer get the chance to curate small shows from the collection, thereby learning more about it and being mentored by senior staff. The focus is largely on temporary shows, although there is now an emphasis on collecting contemporary art, by which they mean, as they do when they program Projects (formerly created to showcase emerging artists) "artists that appear in Chelsea and in the art fair/biennial circuit." Where are many of the works that appeared in Robert Storr's brilliant "Modern Art Despite Modernism"? Where are works by US artists from the 1930s - 1940s that are figurative? Where are the Latin American works that don't fall into the new canon of Southern Cone abstraction?

Interestingly, the situation inside these museums is not known to the general public and falls outside the scope of most art writers. Who cares about the rank and file museum workers? What about the strike at MoMA? Has anyone thought to follow up on the status of workers since? The rates of promotion, or lack thereof? The fact that most entry-level curatorial staff (women by and large) are now apparently let go after 3 years as a way to keep to the letter of the union contract, intended originally to protect staff that had gone years without evaluations leading to promotion, but now means there is no chance of a promotion.

At the Guggenheim, however, staff are apparently evaluated annually, not just by their supervisor, but by colleagues, and they have a chance to respond. They are regularly promoted, and have opportunities to curate even at junior levels. So ironically, at the evil, corporate, mercenary, dysfunctional Guggenheim, staff are treated with respect and there is a level of collegiality across the board that is found at MoMA only in small pockets of the institution.

So ironically, I now wonder, is it a bad thing or a good thing that Krens goes and Lowry stays?


ARTS / ART & DESIGN
Guggenheim’s Provocative Director Steps Down
By CAROL VOGEL
Published: February 28, 2008
The move comes three years after Thomas Krens won a showdown with the foundation’s biggest benefactor.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/arts/design/28muse.html?ex=1361854800&en=01f3a5fca79ff06b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Xenophobia and Racism in the USA: The Obama Case

I was stunned by a BBC news article (below) about the circulation of a photo of Barack Obama wearing Somalian clothing. Apparently, the Clinton campaign disseminated the image in the hopes of dissuading voters from choosing Obama, due to his African ancestry. In addition, the Clinton campaign had allegedly made erroneous claims that Obama is a Muslim. Besides the fact that if true (and I don't doubt it, that Clinton's campaign attempted to highlight the photo and false religious affiliation stories as a way to torpedo Obama), this indicates an extreme and repugnant degree of sleaze and desperation on the part of her floundering campaign, I also wonder, why is it viewed as a liability for Obama to rock the African gear or to worship Mohammad? That both things are taken-for-granted items that are assumed to deter potential voters is to me the most disturbing part of this story. And although probably accurate, given what is known about the vast majority of people in the USA, it still manages to outrage me. I hope they are all wrong, and that Obama wins.



Robed Obama picture ignites row

The photo of Barack Obama was taken during a 2006 trip
US Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have traded accusations over a photo of Mr Obama circulating on the internet.
The picture, sent to the Drudge Report website, shows Mr Obama wearing traditional African dress during a visit to Kenya in 2006.

The Obama camp said it was circulated by Mrs Clinton's staff as a smear. Mrs Clinton's team denied the accusation.

The row comes as the rivals campaign for two crucial primaries next week.

Analysts say Mrs Clinton needs to win the contests, in Texas and Ohio, to remain in the race to choose the Democratic candidate for November's presidential election.

'Fear-mongering'

The photograph shows Mr Obama - whose father came from Kenya - wearing a white turban and a white robe presented to him by elders in the north-east of the country.


Her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election
David Plouffe, Obama campaign chief, accusing the Clinton camp
According to the Drudge Report, which published the photograph on Monday, it was circulated by "Clinton staffers".

Some Clinton aides have tried in the past to suggest to Democrats that Barack Obama's background might be off-putting to mainstream voters.

A campaign volunteer was sacked last year after circulating an email suggesting, falsely, that Mr Obama was a Muslim.

But the BBC Justin Webb in Ohio says the photograph - coming at this pivotal moment in the campaign - is being seen by the Obama team as particularly offensive.

His campaign manager, David Plouffe, accused Mrs Clinton's aides of "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election".

The accusation was dismissed by Mrs Clinton's campaign manager Maggie Williams.

"If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed," she said.

"Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely."

Mrs Williams did not address the question of whether staffers circulated the photo.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7263783.stm