Geraldine Ferraro seems so bitter

I was so proud to be a woman in 1984, when ­Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.

At 33, I really thought the country had come a long way in recognizing that a woman could be a man’s equal given the chance.

And Ferraro, a U.S. representative from New York, was the manifestation of that idea. If she were accepted as second in command of our country, the door would be open for women to achieve leadership roles in other areas as well, I hoped.

Then came the controversies about her husband’s tax returns and about Barbara Bush describing Ferraro as “a word that rhymes with rich.”

None of that dampened my admiration. In fact, I loved Ferraro’s willingness to speak her mind about political issues of the day and her refusal to back down in a debate with George Bush the elder, her Republican counterpart.

Mondale and Ferraro lost the election badly to Ronald Reagan and Bush. She didn’t win another political election after that, but she came close a couple of times.

Then, I lost track of her as she lived her life and I lived mine.

Earlier this year, I read her endorsement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Newsweek magazine, and the warm memories returned.

Ferraro, I thought, is as feisty as ever.

Disappointment returned just as swiftly. It was as if Ferraro had sucker-punched me or kicked me in the gut.

Without flinching or apology, Ferraro said what apparently a lot of white people of traditional mind were thinking.

That she would take that road, the one more traveled, was in itself shocking to me.

But it was demoralizing to have that road covered in old racial attacks that the Democratic Party has prided itself on fighting against.

Ferraro, in a lame ­attempt to shore up support for Clinton, repeatedly made disparaging remarks about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. As has been well-reported, Ferraro, in a radio interview on Feb. 26, a newspaper article March 7 and a speech before that, said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

That was bad enough, but she eventually, after a few interviews in which she stubbornly stuck to her guns, claimed she was a victim because she is white.

Ferraro, after more than a week of claiming she couldn’t or wouldn’t resign from her voluntary position as a Clinton fund-raiser, did so on March 12. But that didn’t quiet the woman I once admired. That bullheaded outspokenness I once thought was courageous demanded to be heard and to be recognized as an elderly stateswoman speaking the truth.

“I wish I were a black man,” Ferraro said in an interview on CNN March 13. “That way, I could make all the racist comments about black men that I wanted to, and no one would call me a racist.”

That was about day four of her continuous TV appearances. I guess she was getting tired.

“As it is,” she continued, “being a white woman, when I make racist remarks about black men, everyone accuses me of being a racist.”

Aren’t racist remarks an obvious indicator of racism?

“That is why being a white woman totally sucks,” Ferraro said. “If my middle name was Hussein, I’d be president by now.”

If you close your eyes, the woman speaking sounds bitter and out of touch.

The sad part is that when you open your eyes and see Ferraro, you just want to cry.

This is undoubtedly the most interesting election I have ever experienced.