Hillary: The cartoonists have spoken

I’ve been getting tremendous pressure from New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo’s staff to walk back my post in which I passingly described Cuomo’s recent “shuck and jive” comment as racist.

Cuomo’s folks have done a tremendous job of putting this toothpaste back in the tube. But I’m not buying what they’re selling. I also “actually read” the interview in question. The Cuomo camp claims that context here is everything — that because the “shuck and jive” comment was not a direct reference to Obama’s performance as a candidate, that it was innocent.
<...>
Sometimes context is everything. But sometimes a remark like shuck and jive — which specifically refers to the the artful oratorical prowess of black people to dissemble before white power — transcends all context. There’s one black candidate in this race — one who dazzles the media to boot. And Cuomo used an explicitly racialized, and in my opinion old-school racist, phrase to describe why shimmering TV appearances were insufficient to win the early states. There is no “mistake.” The racist dig is, indeed, unmistakable.

http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/2008/01/16/the-great-shuck-and-jive-debate-of-08-andrew-cuomos-staff-responds/