Hillary Has History of Racial Gaffes

When U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said at a St. Louis fund raiser last weekend that civil rights legend Mahatma Gandhi reminded her of a gas station attendant, it wasn't the first time the former first lady had made a racist-sounding slip of the tongue.

Less than five months ago, for instance, Mrs. Clinton was addressing the American Constitution Society when she found herself singing the praises of the "white suburbs" of her youth.

Contending that Republicans wanted to roll back the clock on five decades of social progress in America, Mrs. Clinton mused:

"What was that golden age that they want to go back to? You know, is it back to the 1950s white suburbs for family life, which I grew up in and write about in my book - and am very grateful for, but didn't exactly describe the universal experience in America?"

Media reaction to Hillary saying she was grateful she grew up in the "white suburbs": Zilch.

Mrs. Clinton's ethnic slurs were sometimes harder to paint as accidental, such as the time she invoked Sen. Alfonse D'Amato's Italian heritage to help derail his 1998 re-election bid.

In her landmark book "Hell to Pay," Hillary's late biographer Barbara Olson recalled:

"Alfonse D'Amato who, after a bruising year investigating the Clintons, was on the comeback trail in New York until he ran smack into Hillary. She raised more than a million dollars for his victorious opponent and publicly ridiculed him as 'Senator Tomato.'"

In 1996 San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown became the target of Mrs. Clinton's unique sense of humor. Here's how the Los Angeles Times covered Hillary's performance:

"Speaking in a mock African American accent, Mrs. Clinton said that Brown asked two years ago to be introduced to 'this Emily List' whom he supposed to be a wealthy Democratic donor."

Imitating Brown, Clinton huffed, "She's supportin' all these people. She's supportin' Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She's supported Sen. Barbara Boxer. ... She supported everybody. Why won't she support me?"

The then-first lady told the group that when she explained to Brown, then California's Assembly speaker, that Emily's List was a political fund-raising organization dedicated to electing female Democrats, he tried to cover up his gaffe.

"Oh, I knew that all the time," she quoted Brown as saying.

Asked if the mayor objected to Hillary's use of a mock black accent to tell a story portraying Brown as ignorant, his spokesman told the paper, "It depends on how she said it. The mayor's not a real uptight person. If Hillary was in good humor, it wouldn't be a problem."

All this from the woman whose book "It Takes a Village" urged, "Within and beyond their homes adults must speak out against racial, ethnic, religious or gender slurs."

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