CHARLOTTE, NC — Presidential hopefuls are starting to weigh in following the deadliest mass killing on U.S. soil since 9/11. Mary C. Curtis weighs in on how the Orlando shooting is shaping the current political landscape and impacting the race for the White House.
Weighing In on How the Orlando Shootings Are Shaping Campaign 2016
Jun152016
‘Calm’ May Not Fit Country’s Mood, but It’s Obama’s Only Choice
Sometimes, even when I suspect that he knows it will hurt him, President Barack Obama does not follow the script. The evening of the day when terrorists struck in Belgium, the president and his family attended a Major League Baseball exhibition game in Cuba. Why didn’t he rush back to Washington, D.C., or to Belgium to show solidarity with our European allies? “The whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives,” he told ESPN during the game.
Agree or disagree with the choice—and Republican critics didn’t hesitate to strongly disapprove—Obama showed the calm that has characterized his presidency but that may be out of step with Americans’ fear of terrorism reaching our shores again. (At least, that what’s GOP presidential candidates and their supporters are hoping.)
When Obama was running for president in 2008, however, calm was one of the few emotions allowed in his public persona. If he had introduced himself in red-faced, hair-on-fire mode (think the current Republican front-runner), his campaign would have ended before it began.
Mar252016
How Will History View Those Who Would Erase Obama From the Books?
Here’s an easy prediction to make: The historic election and two-term presidency of Barack Obama will provide endless material to future academics, journalists and commentators. Many books will be written examining every aspect of the first African-American president’s campaigns and years in the White House, with few agreeing on anything except the fact that President Obama did, indeed, make history. He and his policies will be loved, loathed and everything in between.
But you get the feeling that the information flood will somehow miss certain Americans, including those leaders who shared those Washington years with Obama, and spent many of them in denial. In the American history books Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example, chooses for his library shelves, will the Obama years be mysteriously missing?
Feb292016
From rodeo clowns to voting rights, understanding race and history
Have the folks who jeered the President Obama stand-in at that Missouri rodeo ever heard of Bill Pickett?
Pickett was an African American cowboy, inventor of the gutsy bulldogging technique, grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Pickett starred in rodeos and movies, traveled the West and in the 1970s was inducted into the National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame. He’s depicted as a legend of the West on a U.S. stamp. Pickett was a founder of the same rodeo tradition that allowed the Missouri state fair crowd to whoop and holler, encouraging a bull to run down the “president” while an accomplice jiggled the broad lips on the mask of the clown dressed as Obama and an announcer teased violence that recalled the worst of the ways this country has treated its black citizens.
Aug152013
Zimmerman juror says he ‘got away with murder’ in case that continues to divide
Juror B29 is the anti-Juror B37. The only minority among the six women who found George Zimmerman not guilty of murder and manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin said Zimmerman “got away with murder.” She said on Thursday that she feels she owes an apology to Martin’s parents. “You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty.”
Her sentiments contradict Juror B37, who in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper expressed empathy with “Georgie,” and the armed neighborhood watchman’s frustration with crimes committed by “these people.” And while the words of Juror B29, a 36-year-old nursing assistant and mother of eight, won’t bring Trayvon Martin back, they publicly help to restore individuality and humanity to the unarmed 17-year-old and to his grieving parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton.
In the midst of politicians and pundits standing their ground, sometimes with seemingly little regard that a child was lost, Juror B29 talks about how she feels. “It’s hard for me to sleep, it’s hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin’s death. And as I carry him on my back, I’m hurting as much [as] Trayvon’s Martin’s mother because there’s no way that any mother should feel that pain,” she said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, to be broadcast on “World News” and “Nightline” on Thursday and “GMA” on Friday.
Jul252013
In conversations on race, everyone has to listen
CHARLOTTE — If President Obama’s personal and heartfelt speech on race reached only the ears of Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, it would have been enough. “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” the president said, leaving unsaid a parent’s dream for a child, the unspoken other side of the equation, that Trayvon Martin could have become him in 35 years – an educated man, a husband and father and, perhaps, president of the United States.
“We are thankful for President Obama’s and Michelle’s prayers, and we ask for your prayers as well as we continue to move forward,” the parents responded. “President Obama sees himself in Trayvon and identifies with him. This is a beautiful tribute to our boy.” They will never have their son back but it must have been sweet relief to hear kind words from the president in a week when so many were trying to turn a 17-year-old into someone the people closest to him did not recognize.
The trial in Sanford, Fla., that ended with the acquittal of George Zimmerman for all charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin quickly turned into a debate on gun restrictions, Stand Your Ground laws, racial profiling and the justice system. Even for those who agree with the trial’s conclusion, Trayvon Martin’s life should matter.
That’s why it’s a good thing that the president’s Friday message was intended for more than an audience of two. “I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” he said to everyone. As people listened, they heard what they wanted to hear.
Jul222013
Would Obama consider Ray Kelly for Homeland Security amid stop-and-frisk controversy?
It was no surprise that during interviews with Univision and other Spanish-language stations that aired this week, immigration reform was the most discussed issue for President Obama. With the U.S. Senate and House in disagreement over provisions of an overhaul, and Democrats and Republicans vying for the votes of a growing demographic, that was expected.
But while the president was not asked, nor did he speak, about the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Fla., one that has spawned heated discussions about racial profiling across the country, he did speculate about a possible candidate for Homeland Security chief, someone who has become a lightning rod on the issue.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would be “well-qualified” to run the Department of Homeland Security, Obama said in an interview with Univision’s affiliate in the New York/New Jersey area. He hasn’t actually named Kelly as his choice to replace outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is leaving to head the University of California system.
Was putting such a strong endorsement out there a first step toward seeing how Kelly’s name is received, or was it a case of the president being polite when being put on the spot?
Jul182013
Owning guns, not NRA dogma
When the NRA brought its annual meeting to Charlotte in 2010, I covered it for Politics Daily, but even if I hadn’t had the assignment, I might have stopped by. The convention center floor was certainly a spectacle, filled with displays of guns, ammunition, camouflage clothing and more. It would have made an entertaining afternoon out, especially with my husband – the serious gun owner in the family — who loves gadgets of every type.
I knew, though, that having to wade through the signs warning of an Obama gun grab would be a turn off for him. Excuse the weaponized puns, but he would have recoiled from the loaded rhetoric predicting ominous government conspiracies. I advised him that if he just wanted to see the “stuff,” he should stay away.
Compared to this year’s NRA meeting in Houston, the 2010 extravaganza seemed positively quaint in retrospect.
May072013
From Mississippi to Boston, it’s the accusation that lingers
What is the lasting effect if you’re caught “trending” as the news of the day? Your name lives on, part of an electronic and social media trail that lasts forever.
Apr242013
Roger Ebert: Passionate critic, half of a great love story
His long and loving tribute to the woman who ended his bachelorhood showed how much his passion for film extended to the partner he credited with completing his life.
Apr052013
