August 03, 2004

We demand to know what race she is. President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney. A tale of security, racial-profiling, a new status quo?

race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name. The background checks on name, birthdate, social security number weren't enough. What was her name? Mamta Popat. Why, that's "Jane Smith" in Arizona you know. Perhaps it's not surprising that no other media have picked up the story. Why is it not surprising? . . I'm not telling.

posted by pete_best 20 years ago
  • from a folo: However, a photographer for the competing paper, the Tucson Citizen, told The New York Sun last night he had also been asked to disclose his race before the same event at Tucson
  • Recent mefi discussion, in which one member mentions that they knew her in college. No terrorist tendancies, apparently. But I wouldn't trust people educated in the States myself.
  • Why do they need to protect the President or Vice-President so stringently? It's not like they are royalty - there will be another one in either a few months or four years. Our Prime Ministers wander around, strangle protesters, hit burglars with sculpture - they can protect themselves.
  • This is ugly. Why would they need to know what the photographer's race was? The only thought I had was maybe they thought she might be of Arab descent, and therefore have a higher profile for possible violence. Though even that is about as lame as anything else they might come up with. Now if they're asking everyone...it's still lame, but at least it's not profiling.
  • I believe that the Republican party generally pays a couple of local non-white folks to appear at all of their functions so that it can appear that there are actually some supporters of color. If this photographer was not white, then the Republicans could save a few dollars by hiring one less non-white to be there. It was just saving us all tax dollars. I don't see what the big deal was.
  • My question is, what does race tell that name, birthdate, social security number and resultant Secret Service background check doesn't reveal? Are they just incompetent? Or are they just lazy? "'zit one o' them Ay-rabs?" "could be, sair. She gots an funny naime." "Well find the hell out then!" and big surprise that the middle aged white guy has no troubles in revealing that he is, in fact, a member of the ruling demographic
  • jb, the reason for the Secret Service is because US Presidents have a long and established history of being assassinated. Plus, we have a society where anyone can have a gun, so that makes the assassination attempts easier. I'm not up on your politics, and a quick google search revealed nothing, but how many of your Prime Ministers have been assassinated, or have gone through an assassination attempt? We didn't really worry about it until Lincoln, either.
  • hate these goddamn idiotic requests from bush et al. this is just one more reason i don't feel these folks are the right ones to run this country.
  • Sandpiper, for what it's worth we have as many guns available and on the streets in canada (proportionate to our population) as the usa does. we just have this weird habit of not shooting each other as often. but yah, i don't think there's ever been an asssassination attempt on any of our former pm's. if there was it would have to have been quite some time ago. it's a shame no one ever tried to take out brian mulroney tho', heh. despite your history with presidential assassinations, i still think the whole secret service thing is over done. maybe if you used the same moderate level of protection that we do, you could avoid nitwits like gwb - i'm sure he would never have considered the position without 'round the clock uber-protection.
  • sorry, SandSPIDER. doh.
  • Can someone please point out to me how we all wouldn't be better off if someone did decide to take out the Dick-man? I suppose the argument could be made that that would leave a moron in charge of the country, but isn't that supposed to be his job anyway?
  • Oh, sure, you could just not shoot each other, but that's hardly American, is it? No, I fear our country's character is too steeped in shooting people to really break out of it by just not doing it. We started with the necessity of shooting the Brits just to become our own country, and then we followed that up with shooting each other in the Civil War. After that precedent was set, there was really no reason to stop with the shooting. And not to worry about the name. I'm not one of the shooting types.
  • I'm not sure the precise criteria, but generally the 24 Sussex break in is considered an assassination attempt (against Jean Chretien, 1995 - this is the sculpture incident jb referred to). Admittedly, such attempts are much less common in Canada than elsewhere. The last person assassinated in Canadian (federal) politics was Thomas D'Arcy McGee in 1868 (which I only know because I used to work in a building named after him). Which has nothing to do with potential racial profiling of reporters in Texas so I'll be quiet now.
  • two words: RACIAL PROFILING...sux. ok, so that's three words, but one is a commentary.
  • My question is, what does race tell that name, birthdate, social security number and resultant Secret Service background check doesn't reveal? Precisely the point. They want to be sure they don't have two people confused, then that's what your SSN is for. Unique ID numbers. I don't care if they were asking white, straight, Protestant, middle-class men, it's a stupid and unnecessary request. IMO, they probably asked the white guy to cover their asses.
  • According to this list the Romans had more of a problem with assassinations then we do. Which leads me to wonder how effective the Praetorian Guards were.
  • If they were checking because they truly though that she might be attempting to assassinate the president, what on earth would her race have to do with it? "Sir, she's Swedish." "Definitely an assassin."
  • OT: While back i worked the US Census (year 2000, "only once in a thousand years will so many zeroes be lined up at once!" I had a Pontiac Grand-Dame to get around in, so naturally my territory was way up top a mountain in rural Vermont. All dirt roads. And this was during Spring Breakup. Yeehaw, what fun! Ennoway (as they say in Vermont) I slipped and fishtailed my way down this seasonal road, into this Holler that wasn't on the Gummint maps, found an obviously hand made cabin. the guy was very nice, for a woodchuck. When we came to the question : 'what race are you' he looked affronted and said 'I'm from Vermont.' I'm thinkin: is this guy for real? But he was, and I was strangely ashamed.
  • haha good story PatB. On the surveys and registration sites I usually choose whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. On the last one I was a 43 year old pacrim asian grandmother. Schweet.
  • PatB: For the US census I said I was a Pacific Islander. Which is where I'm from, so it's quite true. I don't like being asked my race, or ethnicity, or any of the niced-up terms for it. There's an amusing discussion in NZ Parliament currently over what to call kiwis of European descent. It's one of the funnier articles I've seen in a NZ paper in some time.