Hillary Clinton

'œI've still got muscle cramps from cringing,' said Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel. Appearing at a Harlem church on Martin Luther King Day, Sen. Hillary Clinton told the 'œmostly black' congregation that the U.S. House of Representatives 'œhas been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about.' It was bad enough that Clinton would pander to a black audience by using the tragedy of slavery as a casual political metaphor. More excruciating was the 'œhint of Ebonics' in the white senator's down-home phrasing, 'œYou know what I'm talking about.' It was like watching two middle-aged white guys try to give each other a high-five—and miss. By playing the race card so blatantly and so clumsily, Clinton has made two things very clear: She's planning to run for president in 2008—and she's going to have to do it without any of her husband's talent for relating to African-Americans.

Spare me your 'œmanufactured indignation,' said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. Hillary Clinton is far from the first politician to use the metaphor of a slave plantation to describe the political dynamics of Washington. In fact, in 1994 Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich memorably likened himself to the leader of a 'œslave rebellion' in the 'œplantation' of the then Democrat-controlled House. The point Clinton was trying to make was that Republicans are running the House of Representatives more like a fiefdom than a democratically elected body. While crushing all dissent, the GOP's 'œplantation masters' have gutted programs for the poor while enacting tax cuts for the rich. Clinton may have engaged in a bit of hyperbole to make a point, 'œbut anybody who says she's wrong hasn't been paying much attention to Congress in recent years.'