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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Village Concern Trolling About Cabinet Diversity

BooMan makes it plain:
So far, the administration has replaced a white man at Defense with a white man at Defense. They've replaced a white Christian man at Treasury with an Orthodox Jew who faithfully observes the Sabbath... He's (for now) retained Eric Holder, a black man, as his Attorney General. He's retained Eric Shinseki, of Japanese ancestry, as head of Veteran's Affairs. He's retained Kathleen Sebelius as head of Health & Human Services… John Kerry's replacement of Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State… share something different in common. They are the two most prominent members of the Democratic Party who have never been president. Kerry, like Clinton, was selected for his stature, not his gender or race. It could wind up that Obama's second term cabinet is less diverse than his first… [but] it is totally premature to characterize the diversity of the new cabinet… but… also… [i]f the most diverse cabinet in history gets a little less diverse, that isn't exactly surprising. The thing is, based on the appointments that have already been announced, it really hasn't become less diverse at all.
But if you are a punditocrapic gossip-columnist looking to whomp up faux outrage for eyeballs this scarcely matters to you, any more than it does to those loud but few sufferers of the left variant of Obama-derangement that doesn't live in terror at the prospect of the kenyamuslim taking their guns and putting them in FEMA camps in the name of some homogay variation of Sharia Law but in terror at the prospect of the stealthreagan smashing the New Deal and Great Society in the name of some hyper-military variation of sooper-plutocracy. As a green queer feminist secular democratic socialist I'm far to the left of Obama, but I don't expect a President of the United States to want what I do, I have a sensible idea of the role of the actually-existing executive branch as part of a larger terrain of resistance and reform in the direction of sustainable equity-in-diversity and, apart from the egregious awfulness of the drone war and civil liberties violations associated with the ongoing global war on terror (which I think Obama may actually legally end before he's done, which wouldn't justify what he's done, but would be something at least), I think Obama's been the most progressive President since FDR -- an indictment of the office as much as praise of Obama, but still -- and by far a better president than I dreamed might occupy the White House when we were still living in the distressed depths of the killer clown administration of George W. Bush. Anyway, let's wait and see on the diversity of the cabinet, shall we?

1 comment:

jollyspaniard said...

I'm a bit anxious about the new leadership at the EPA.