I’ve been reading — and it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to work this doggone computer,  I’m not very good at it — the various comments that have been made on the wOw site especially to things that I’ve said I believe. One of the greatest things I want to tell you is I appreciate everybody’s support. Some things that I read, though, kind of distressed me — like a response to something that I had written by Joanne Selle and Marjorie C., talking really about the black issue — the fact that I brought up race when talking about Sarah Palin’s daughter.

I said I thought if it had been one of Barack Obama’s daughters as opposed to a very nice young white lady it would have been a different response. Well people took to the fact that I made the differentiation by saying a white lady or a white girl and that made the discussion about race. Let me be really clear: You cannot tell me in this country — when you put a white girl next to a black girl and they’re both pregnant — that people are not going to say, “Well, she’s going to end up on welfare.” Or people are going to make those kinds of remarks that we’ve heard made, by the way, over the last 10 to 15 years; at least I have. And maybe it’s because my child got pregnant very early on that I have a distinctive feel about this. My daughter was talked about very differently than other people at the time, and maybe it’s because she was the child of a famous person. I don’t know. But to say that doesn’t come into play is ridiculous. To say that it is using the race card seems very strange to me. It’s an observation about a truism in the United States. They would have been treated differently. Would they have treated Chelsea Clinton the same way they’re treating Sarah Palin’s daughter? I don’t know. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that maybe they would have said the same thing about Chelsea Clinton, that she’s young and we have to stand beside her and it’s nobody’s business. Maybe they would have said that. I don’t think so, really, in my heart of hearts, but maybe they would have.

Maybe you have to take a look, and my using a black and white description was not valid. I’ll take that. But I do take offense to Joanne and Marjorie talking about how black people want everything given to them, and how people of color are bitching about the fact that they didn’t get enough from Katrina and how when it happened in Iowa nobody like Oprah or anyone else did concerts for them. I do want to point out to you that I find it interesting you did not refer to the fires in California. Remember the fires in California? Where suddenly the government swooped right in there with money for different communities? Or other natural disasters that have happened — like Florida. You didn’t mention those where the government swooped in. I don’t think you’re accurate, Joanne, in saying that no one helped in Iowa. I don’t think that’s true at all. As a matter of fact, I know it’s not true.