Clinton, Obama Spar as Race Heats Up
By Beth Fouhy, Associated Press, Jan. 14
...Both Clinton and her husband, the former president, have engaged in damage control after black leaders criticized comments they made shortly before the New Hampshire primary last Tuesday, which Clinton won. Clinton was quoted as saying that King's dream of racial equality had been realized only when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while her husband said Obama was telling a "fairy tale" about his opposition to the Iraq war. The former president has appeared on several black-oriented radio programs to say he was referring to Obama's record on the war, not on the Illinois senator's effort to become the first black president.
As evidence for their argument that the Obama campaign had pushed the story, Clinton advisers pointed to
a memo written by an Obama staffer compiling examples of comments by Clinton and her surrogates that could be construed as racially insensitive. The memo later surfaced on a handful of political Web sites. Obama later called Clinton's accusations "ludicrous," and said he found her comments about King to be ill-advised and unfortunate.
Another rival, John Edwards, also criticized Clinton's comments about King. "I must say I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that," Edwards told more than 200 people at a predominantly black Baptist church in Sumter, SC. Edwards said, "Those who believe that real change starts with Washington politicians have been in Washington too long and are living a fairy tale."
Later yesterday, the Clinton campaign scrambled to explain comments by a top supporter, Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, that seemed to raise the issue of Obama's admitted teenage drug use. Johnson said at an event with Clinton in Columbia, SC, that he was "frankly insulted" the Obama campaign would make implications about "Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues--when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood; I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book." In his memoir, Obama described using marijuana and occasionally sampling cocaine as a youth. The Clinton campaign later released a statement in which Johnson said his comments referred to Obama's years as a community organizer in Chicago "and nothing else."