Victimology

The Anchoress is correct when she notes that the focus on Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons should not on racism, which seems mild, but on its victim stance, which dominates the speeches. It has been a fascinating race to the bottom for victim status in the Democratic nomination process, with Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro also weighing in on the unfairness of how Hillary has been and is being treated because she is a woman.

Eric Scheie over at Classical Values has an apropos comment, though his post is in relation to hypocrisy and the Eliot Spitzer discussion.

Acting like you're a victim comes naturally, because most of us pity ourselves anyway.

Yes, quite; and I don't doubt that at many times in their lives these Democratic worthies have been treated unfairly because of race or sex. Even more have less-fortunate women or African-Americans received some ill treatment.

But it is amusing to take a snapshot of how all these people came up and what was happening in the legendary year 1969. Hillary Clinton was graduating from Wellesley or her way to Yale Law School; Gloria Steinem, after graduating from Smith and publishing a book, was the lioness of the women's movement; Geraldine Ferraro had interrupted her law career to raise children (there may have been some actual suffering in that; she went on to found the - irony alert - Special Victims Unit); Reverend Jeremiah Wright was getting his master's degree. Barack Obama was an eight-year old stepson of an oil company executive in Indonesia. He would go on to Occidental, Columbia and Harvard.

John McCain was being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.