My fourth column for Africana.com came out today. While I suppose I should have written something about the 4th of July I decided to hold back for a couple of reasons. The first is that Jelani Cobb is a much better writer than I am, and I was fairly positive he'd come correct. But the second is that the 4th of July only means one thing to me--my Gramma Tootsie was born on the 4th.
The web esssay as a form is tricky. You want to get in and get out. A tight 1200 words that takes a nice hardline. I don't think I'm good enough to be wishy-washy in 1200 words, which is sometimes why I am often harder on folks like Jackson, Sharpton, and Simmons than I probably would be had I a bit more space.
But here is what I wish I could've expanded on.
The impetus for the column was twofold. I'd read an article somewhere or another about Kerry's relationship with African Americans. I'm going to inevitably end up writing a piece about Kerry and the black church, because I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the line someone's going to take a picture of him shilling for black voters there.
But in this specific case I was more interested in tracing out the benefits of a diverse operative staff for black citizens. We know adding more blacks to the staff gets folks jobs, specifically folks from schools like Michigan, Harvard, and Washington University. But there should be benefits for "regular" folk too, right? I do think a large part of the call for more black campaign staffers is driven by crass considerations of loot and patronage. But I wanted to fight against my own knee-jerk reaction to these considerations.
The second was a sister I know. I didn't mention her name because I wasn't able to get in contact with her before hand, and I didn't know whether she wanted to be outed. But talking with her while she was on her gig, I realized how special she was. And I don't think SHE quite realized it. I tried to get her to write a book about the experience, or at least to journal about it but I'm not sure that she did.
After writing the piece I ended up hollering at a local campaign operative about it. He dropped a tidbit about Dean that I didn't know, but one that makes a lot of sense. Remember how Dean crashed and burned even though he had massive loot compared to the other candidates? It wasn't inefficiency that did him in...well it was, but it wasn't his fault.
The Democratic Party gives candidates a primer on how to run efficient campaigns, how to stretch a donor dollar. From what I understand four candidates received this primer. Dean wasn't one of those candidates. So whereas Lieberman was spending 6c for postage and mailing, Dean was spending a full 37c. No wonder he drained his resources five times sooner. All the more reason why we need a diverse campaign staff...not just diverse along racial lines. Dean got jacked because of a lack of information, as much as he did because of a scream.
Posted by at July 5, 2004 03:30 PM | TrackBack