From the Christopher Hitchens files: Clinton is an "aging and resentful female." Key quote:[Obama] sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive. Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been "our first black president."Hitchens' latest is a screed against what he calls "emphasis on shade" and "shade orientation." He goes on to write that since Barack Obama's mother was white, we shouldn't really consider Obama black. Or maybe we should, because Obama's Chicago church is Afrocentric, and Afrocentrism is "crackpot" and "decidedly ethnic." Ethnic being bad, of course.Hitchens and other pundits may like to entertain the notion of a post-race electorate. But that's a fantasy. In Iowa, a caucus-goer told me he wouldn't support Obama because he was "scary" and "Muslim." Many other reporters made similar observations. The truth is, if Obama (or Clinton) wins the presidency, it will be deeply historic. So I'll ignore Slate's headline to "get over" the fact of his race -- or her gender.--Dana Goldstein
