7:34 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · 2 Comments
4 Nov 20084:52 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · 3 Comments
3 Nov 2008
Just read the news on CNN that Barack Obama’s grandmother died.
Just over a week after he took a break from the campaign trail to visit his ailing grandmother, Barack Obama’s campaign said that 85-year-old Madelyn Dunham had died “peacefully” after a battle with cancer.
“She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility,” said Obama and half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng in a statement released by the campaign Monday afternoon. “She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.
Obama and Soetoro-Ng said there would be a “small private ceremony at a later date.”
Dunham helped raise the Illinois senator during his teen years in Honolulu.
It makes me sad to know that if Obama does win, his win will not be the celebration it should be.
May Ms. Dunham rest in peace, and her family be comforted by the incredible life they know she led.
1:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · 3 Comments
3 Nov 2008Guess what VLatin@s!
Your favorite blogeditorias (is that a word??) have got together to figure out how we will be spending our Election day tomorrow–and wow, oh, wow, do we have some exciting choices set up for ya’ll!

My favorite choice, of course, is the one I (La Macha Glorious) will be setting up–Vivir Latino’s Live Blogging Election Coverage!
I will be setting up a live blog post and will be moderating–all YOU have to do is show up and share your opinion! I will be focusing on the election results as they come in through different U.S. stations, but will be more than willing to stray from that should the need arise!
Jennifer will also be around covering election coverage from outside the U.S., and La Mala will checking in her with normal on the spot coverage.
It promises to be an exciting day, possibly even a historic one. Be sure to come share in the fun with us!
La Vivir Latino Team
7:34 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
29 Oct 2008
Tonight at 8PM EST (about 20 minutes from now), what is being called an “infomercial” about Obama will be broadcast on several major networks, including Univision.
If you won’t be able to watch it, here’s a mini-description:
The trailer is heavy in strings, flags, presidential imagery and some Americana filmed by Davis Guggenheim, whose father was the campaign documentarian of Robert F. Kennedy. As the screen flashes scenes of suburban lawns, a freight train and Mr. Obama seated at a kitchen table with a group of white, apparently working-class voters, Mr. Obama says: “We’ve seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives; much that’s wrong with our country goes back even farther than that.”
Then, while standing before a stately desk and an American flag, Mr. Obama, in a suit, says: “We’ve been talking about the same problems for decades and nothing is ever done to solve them. For the past 20 months, I’ve traveled the length of this country, and Michelle and I have met so many Americans who are looking for real and lasting change that makes a difference in their lives.”
VL will post the commercial (or a link to it) once it hits the Internet! Until then–tell us what you think. Is this too much damn Obama? Or a really nice cherry on the top of an excellent campaign?
7:08 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
29 Oct 2008After all the anger this year about how the presidential races were sexist against Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin (which I *know* they were, I’m not contesting that at all), followed up by examples of Hillary Nutcrackers and Palin sex dolls and earnest assertions that the sexualization of a candidate would never happen if that candidate was a man–I was really interested to read the following article in which the sexualization of Obama (and McCain as a consequence) is examined:
Comedian Bill Maher appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to plug his movie, Religulous. Although the segment was taped before the debates, Maher summed up what a lot of people were thinking. He called Obama the “Jackie Robinson of American politics” and said that much of the Republican pundits were couching their discussions in veiled racism, playing off his funny-sounding name or going so far as claiming Obama has a “big, black uncircumcised penis and it smells like curry.”
I hadn’t been aware of many of the examples listed–but now that I am, it makes me wonder if the proper assertion isn’t “It never would happen if it were a man” but rather instead, “It would never happen to a *white* man”?
What do you think?
12:37 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
22 Oct 2008You know, one of the first ‘rules’ I ever got from my university advisor on how to work job applications was to sit and read the advertisement really closely before you work through the application. That way you could be extra sure that you had the skills that the employer was looking for, but also so that you could mold your resume around the requirements of the job.
My advisor told me, there’s nothing that will get a job application thrown in the garbage faster than an application where the applicant clearly isn’t really even all that sure about what job it is they are applying for.
Which brings me to this lovely clip:
Er…since when was the VP post all about monitoring and rubber necking Congress? I wonder if McCain just told her that so that he could keep her away from his White House should he win?
6:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
21 Oct 2008Ok, I expected that there would be a certain amount of racism with this presidential election. I live next to an awful lot of libertarians and ‘liberal’ white folks (as in, they don’t see color, which means there’s no reason for affirmative action, race based organizations like NAACP etc) and I know that there are many of them that say quietly to themselves, “Obama is nice and everything, but well, I won’t vote for *that* kind of person.”
Which, of course, means, I won’t vote for a black person.
I have some big ass problems with that kind of logic, but these folks are my neighbors, so I can’t very well go around beating them up. I talk with them, they talk with me, and hopefully somewhere down the line, we’ll come to a truce that we can all live by.
But then I read this story–and I am not sure if we live in the 1950′s or in the year 2008:
Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.
Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said.
The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.
Signs and whispers are one thing. Murdering a bear with a gunshot to the head and putting pictures of a human being on it is something else all together.
Where is this blessed “America” that the far right is so eager to rub our faces in? Where is the rule of law? Where does the idea come from that if you don’t like a person’s politics, the next best thing is to kill him (or otherwise imply murder through the murder of other beings?).
I hope the FBI/Secret Service has made its way out to North Carolina.
3:46 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · 1 Comment
17 Oct 2008
This picture reminded me of La Mala’s astute observations of John McCain’s muecas. The blog that posted this picture was talking very importantly about the author’s ambivalent agreement with McCain over the issue of bio fuels and ethanol.
But of course, crass and shallow me was more interested in yucking it up with Mala over the crass and shallow picture comparing McCain to a lizard. So here I am.
Yuk, yuk.
2:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
13 Oct 2008Sokari at blacklooks led me to this video while I obsessively checked my twitter account. Rosa Clemente speaks at a what I think is a New York University (I’ve watched about 20 minutes in the video so far and nobody has said directly where this speech is at).
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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