Across the pond

Barrack Obama has cruised to victory in Missisippi with 60 per cent of the vote, a state he was expected to win. But that victory changes nothing. Hillary Clinton got a very respectable 38 per cent. The race will certainly not be decided before 22 April when Obama faces a much tougher battle amongst the steel mills of Pennsylvania which has masses of those working class whites, many of whom love Hillary because she is sensitive to their difficulties in finding work in this old industrial state.

It is, of course, the land of The Deerhunter, which evoked the realities of modern warfare and the shattering effect on the lives of the soldiers tried to rebuild when they came home. The final scene was in a bar, when they sang God Bless America, quite the most heartwrenching and mournful rendering of this familar anthem that I have ever heard.

The message from the Democratic voters to the candidates could not be more clear. They want both Obama and Clinton. But out on the campaign trail the supporters of both sides are engaged in trench warfare. While Missippi was still voting, Geraldine Ferraro, fired off a rocket, alleging that Obama was winning votes just because he was black and that Hillary Clinton was suffering because of the reluctance of American voters. She, above all knows, since she was the Vice Presidential candidate in 2000, and it was not a pretty sight to watch the negative stuff which was fired at her.

The passions that are being aroused by this struggle are reverberating three thousand miles away on the banks of the Thames. Dinner on Monday night at the National Film Theatre nearly ended in fisticuffs. I was blasted from across the table by a British woman,  who happens to be married to an American,, for calling Hillary Clinton in my blog, ‘Clinton’. She said this was sexist and was an example of just the prejudice that she is faccing from the press.

I tried to explain that I was simply following a journalistic convention, which was totally neutrel as far as gender was concerned, and saves words. Far from demeaning female candidates it gives the same status as the males. The convention is that you give the full name in the first reference and use the surname only for the rest of the article.

My friend argued that in this paritular case it was a reminder that she is the wife of big Bill. It is, after all, his family name not hers.  

Now that I have cooled down I think she does have a point. My own belief is clear. I think it is just as difficult for a woman to go for the top job as it is for a black. And if the journalistic convention I am using gives some readers a different impression I do not have to stick to the convention.

Quite how I am going to handle it, I am not sure. I would like to keep some consistency. I don’t want to have to write Barack Obama at every mention as well, and somehow it does not feel right to refer to him as Barack.

And what about the other contenders? It certainly does not feel right to refer to McCain simply as John, because that is one the most common first names, and leaves room for ambiguity.

My tentative decision is that I shall from now on write in my blog the way I speak in conversation. In conversation I usually say Obama, Hillary and McCain. I frequently say George W. instead of Bush, to make it quite clear that I am not referring to his Dad. And I say, either Jack Kennedy or JFK to make it clear I am not referring to Edward Kennedy.

That will acually save me time. Because I have just read what I have written. In the first paragraph I wrote ‘Hillary’ in the the second mention. Under my old rules I would have wasted time by changing that to ‘Clinton’ before I posted the blog.