Presidential hopefuls can't keep followers on short leash
The presidential race has become a marathon run across minefields.
Candidates have been compelled to demonstrate not only endurance but also a talent for cleaning up damage each time another mine explodes.
The latest exercise of which is Barack Obama's expressed disappointment in longtime friend Father Michael Pfleger, who recently used the pulpit of Obama's South Side church to mock Hillary Clinton, touching, as he did, raw nerves regarding race, gender and class.
In a video seen everywhere by almost everybody, Pfleger ripped Clinton before the Trinity United Church of Christ congregation.
"I'm Bill's wife, I'm white and (the nomination) is mine," said Pfleger, speaking as Clinton. "… And then, out of nowhere, came 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama.' And she said, 'Oh, damn. Where did you come from? I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show."
Pfleger went on to make fun of Clinton's famous New Hampshire tears and say: "She wasn't the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying."
Pfleger spoke in the same pulpit from which retired Trinity pastor Jeremiah Wright created a firestorm. The Pfleger video surfaced about a week after John McCain rejected the support of the Rev. John Hagee, who made anti-Catholic remarks and suggested that God had a hand in the Holocaust as a means of setting up Israel as a Jewish state. It came two months after Geraldine Ferraro resigned her post in Clinton's campaign after suggesting that Obama would not have done as well in the primary if he weren't black.
Can't candidates for the most powerful office on Earth instill in their high-profile supporters a little stronger sense of self-discipline?
Not really, says Bruce Newman, professor of marketing at DePaul University's Kellstadt School of Business. "As an organization grows," he said, "control diminishes."
Add to that, he said, the ability of special-interest groups to seize on gaffes and disseminate them instantly around the globe by Internet, and it becomes even more problematic for a candidate to keep supporters fully in line.
Ann Keating, a history professor at North Central College in Naperville, laughed at the idea that anyone could restrain Pfleger in particular.
"He does what he wants to do, and he says what's on his mind," she said.
Cardinal Francis George may succeed where Obama did not. The cardinal said Friday afternoon that Pfleger will remain muzzled -- not mentioning any candidate by name -- in the foreseeable future.
But Pfleger apologized and deferred to his boss only after the race and gender controversy he set off was already raging.
Will his performance -- particularly his mocking of Clinton's show of emotion -- build further resentment among Clinton's women supporters, some of whom already think she's been treated unfairly because of gender?
Maybe, although Keating thinks that effect will be limited.
"I think that most individuals have already sorted out how they feel about this," she said.
Keating saw Pfleger's remarks as more of a challenge based on class than gender.
Omar McRoberts, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, agrees, to the extent that race and class privilege sometimes go hand in hand.
"There are ways in which she represents white privilege, and that's what Pfleger was talking about."
McRoberts said it's unfortunate that race and gender have become such polarizing campaign issues. But he said that was almost inevitable considering the unresolved issues in the United States regarding both racial and gender inequality.
It's interesting, McRoberts said, that race discussions have been focused on Obama and gender issues on Clinton. The situation is more complicated and nuanced, McRoberts said, because Obama enjoys the privileges that go with being male in America while Clinton enjoys the advantages of being white.
"We should look at this as an opportunity to move toward a more sophisticated discussion about all types of inequalities," McRoberts said.