By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : US democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s “Punjab jab” against his rival contender Hillary Clinton has made it to Time magazine’s list of Top 10 Campaign Gaffes.
Listed No. 9 on Time’s list of presidential campaign trail faux pas is “The campaign of Democratic Senator Barack Obama referring to Clinton as ‘Hillary Clinton, D-Punjab,’ in a jab at her work on behalf of Indian-Americans.”
Last June, Obama’s campaign sparked controversy by circulating a memo accusing the former first lady of pandering to the Indian American community by referring to her as “Clinton (D-Punjab)” – journalistic shorthand for Democratic senator from Punjab.
It also accused the Democratic front-runner of getting “tens of thousands” from companies that outsource jobs to India.
Rising star Obama quickly made amends by apologising for the “Punjab jab” as the Indian-American community took umbrage, denouncing his memo as “the worst kind of anti-Indian American stereotyping”.
Other gaffes on Time’s top 10 list are:
1. Republican Rudy Giuliani (former New York mayor) saying he was at “ground zero” as often as the rescue and recovery workers.
2. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden (chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) calling Obama “the first mainstream African-American (presidential candidate) who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”.
3. Republican and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s claims about his hunting experience.
4. Republican Senator John McCain singing “bomb, bomb, bomb … bomb, bomb Iran.”
5. Democrat nominee for vice president in 2004 John Edwards’ $400 haircuts.
6. Romney saying “we ought to double Guantanamo.”
7. Giuliani taking cell phone calls from his wife while addressing audiences.
8. Clinton saying she wants to “take those (oil company) profits and put them into a strategic energy fund”.
10. Republican Fred Thompson (former senator and TV show actor) saying he couldn’t remember the details of the legal battle over whether to keep Terry Schiavo alive.
Schiavo, who lived in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years after suffering brain damage in Feb 1990, died in March 2005 when her feeding tube was removed after a prolonged legal battle. Some have since maintained that her death constituted “judicial murder”.