The Fatigued Bloggers: An Overview of Some Things You Might Have Missed

We spent the better part of last week preparing for our two research presentations at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago. You can read our papers if you like, but we warn you: they're a bit rough.

• "Racial Frames and Potential Effects on Minority Candidates in the 2008 Presidential Election"

• "Winners and Losers: Factors Contributing to Minority Candidates' Successes and Failures in American Elections, 1990-2006"

There were many other presentations relevant to TWIR readers, as well. Feel free to browse through the preliminary program and/or search for papers from the conference read.

We're pretty beat (which is partly why we're late this week). Here are some odds and ends that we've not had a chance to get to over the past month or so.
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Thanks to Stephen's colleague Heather Coon for alerting us to this insightful post from Daily Kos last week. What Tami Said does a nice job of conveying the sense of frustration that we often feel regarding our collective inability (or unwillingness) to talk honestly about racial inequality and injustice.


Another of Stephen's colleagues, Jon Mueller, is always great about providing feedback and sharing stories of interest. A while back, he passed on this story about how racism is reflected in children's toys (in this case, dolls). He also shared this very interesting column on The Huffington Post from the son of a conservative white minister, who points out the double-standard in the controversy over Dr. Jeremiah Wright's sermons.


Blogspot member Adam pointed out this widely ignored story about a sorority party at the University of North Dakota where students dressed up as American Indians.

Finally, you may have missed Congressman Emanuel Cleaver's remarks about the Democratic presidential race on Canadian radio. Cleaver (D-MO) is a Clinton supporter, but predicted that Obama would be elected president. To explain, he used a football analogy: even though he thinks that the Indianapolis Colts will beat the Kansas City Chiefs, he cheers for the Chiefs because he is a loyal fan. Hmmm. The Politico.com story has some other quotes, some with racial implications.