What goes around comes around.

I've mentioned the opinion of some that Barrack Obama is not black enough to be elected president in a previous post. The whole idea is just propaganda, of course, but apparently it has been such an effective propaganda ploy that it has gotten recycled for use against other candidates. That is to say, the question "Is Rudolph Giuliani white enough?" is now being asked:

Italians--like Irish, Jews, Poles, Greeks and now Hispanics and others--have struggled in our history to achieve "whiteness." It's not a given--not a fixed characteristic. It's always been a designation granted to a group by the dominant culture.

But that's a done deal for Italian-Americans, long ago. They're white--now. But the question for Giuliani is whether there is some shadow, some echo of the old attitudes in how some voters might approach his candidacy.

Of course, we also know whom the media thinks is too white to be elected President. Another thing about the article that's seems a little weird:

This is a party, after all, that has nominated precisely one ethnic immigrant candidate for national office in its history--Greek-American Spiro Agnew (the Roosevelts and Eisenhowers had been in America for centuries). Republicans have never nominated a Catholic for national office. Democrats have a different record--Irish-Americans Al Smith, John Kennedy and John Kerry; Polish-American Edmund Muskie; Norwegian-American Walter Mondale; Italian-American Geraldine Ferraro; Greek-American Michael Dukakis; Jewish-American Joseph Lieberman.

Note the subtle spin that excludes Ronald Reagan (Irish-American on his father's side) and Barry Goldwater (Polish/Jewish-American on his father's side) from the Republican list.