My friend Linda wrote a new column recently called, “Sexism, Racism, Politics and Double Standards,” in which she argued that this year’s election has bared all of our hypocrisy. She writes:

“We deny it, but there are plenty of us who just can’t get comfortable with the notion of a woman in the White House. She might be smart enough, but with PMS and menopause–well, you know. Women are too emotional. A man is a safer choice. Right? Wrong. Men get by with things that women don’t. A tough-talking man is bold. He’s assertive. A good thing. A tough-talking woman? She’s a b*tch. She’s aggressive. Not a good thing. A man who won’t keep his fly zipped? Honey, there’s a real man. He’s too much man for just one woman. ‘Boys will be boys…’ There’s your conventional wisdom at work. Boys are expected to be bad. There is no ‘Girls will be girls…’ mantra to hide behind. A woman with a yen to stray isn’t ‘too much woman for just one man.’ She’s a tramp. There are no words like “tramp” or “slut” for a promiscuous male.

“An equal number of us are skittish about electing an African American president. We white folks have been slow to accept the lofty idea that the color of a man’s skin has no bearing on his worth, his character or his intellectual capacity. We don’t like admitting to bigotry, but we’re guilty nonetheless.”

It goes further than this, too.

There are some women who are only supporting Hillary because they want to see a woman elected. There are some blacks supporting Obama only because he’s a man of color. I’ve seen black female voters talk about how conflicted they were about which of the two to side with, as if picking Obama makes them less of a woman and picking Clinton makes them less black.

And all along, what they should have been focusing on is which one more closely matches their political views.

There are even some blacks who secretly want Obama to win, but are hestitant to vote for him for fear that a crazy white will try to harm him and that they, the black voters, will somehow share in the responsibility. They’re letting generations of fear and racial targeting influence who they’ll cast a vote for in November.

There are Christians who are hiding behind those “rumors” about Obama being Muslim — and how anyone can believe that after all of the repeated blowups over Obama’s Christian minister, the wrong Rev. Jeremiah Wright is beyond me — and using those rumors as an excuse to vote for someone else. Some of these same people said they’d never be able to vote for a Mormon. Mitt Romney could have attended church ten times as much as these narrow-minded bible-thumpers, and could have lived a life a hundred times more moral, but he wasn’t in their sanctuary, so he wouldn’t have gotten their vote.

Recently, over at The Blue Voice, one of the contributors wrote a piece about her frustration about all the calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race. This was before last Tuesday, when the nominee was all but decided once and for all. But this particular writer said something that really set me off: If Hillary were a man, there wouldn’t be this pressure to step down.

Really?

I get so tired of Clinton’s female supporters trying to play the gender card all the time. Tell Mike Huckabee that if Clinton were a man, no one would question why she was still holding on despite mathematical improbability. I bet he’d raise his eyebrows at you and then say something seemingly sweet but with a nice little bite, as we Southern Baptists have been known to do at times. Long before it became mathematically impossible for Huckabee to be the nominee, people were already looking at him like he was a lunatic for even bothering to show up at his own political rallies. And the selection for a nominee has gone swimmingly by comparison for Republicans.

I have been backing Obama, not because he’s black or because he’s a man; I have backed him because research indicates that he and Clinton’s positions are the closest to my own.  When I was able to narrow it down to the two of them, I selected Obama because I believe him more:  I think Hillary too often says what she thinks we want to hear.

If you haven’t selected a candidate, and are secretly wrestling with some kind of bias, I’ll wrap this post up with Linda’s ending:

“How should these simple truths impact our votes? We vote for the candidate who’s smart enough, whose positions on the war, the economy, education, health care and the environment most closely represent our own priorities. If you’re a bit sexist, but like Clinton’s political stance, vote for her tough male half. If you’re a tad racist, but you like Obama’s vision, remember his mama. Vote for the white half.”

Sometimes the truth can sting a little.