A few years ago Elton said America was incredibly racist because they booted Jennifer Hudson off of American Idol. Now he says they’re misogynistic because they prefer another candidate to Hillary Clinton.
A black woman went on to win American Idol that season, but I don’t remember him apologizing for his half-assed lament about how racist America was… and one wonders why he’s exempt from the same accusation when he supports a white person over a black person.
He’s a brilliant composer, but I’m amazed at what a shallow judgmental prick he is.
I’m not sure when he went off the deep end, but I do know that I haven’t paid attention to him since the mid-90s and I’m surprised that anybody still does.
A person would have to be totally disconnected from reality to not see that there are still a lot of people in America that have misogynistic attitudes - look at the talking heads on news commentary shows or go into a barber shop and start talking about the election.
And if he were simply making a general comment about the ongoing pervasiveness of misogyny in America, he would certainly have a point.
But it seems to me that, in the overall context of his comments about Hillary Clinton, and about the election, it’s difficult to disentangle his comment about misogyny from his comments about Clinton becoming President. Quite a few people over the past few months, including a state chapter of the National Organization of Women, have argued that those who don’t vote for Clinton do this out of misogyny, and it’s not unreasonable to infer something similar from Elton John’s comments.
I don’t doubt that there are people who reject Clinton because they are misogynists. But there are also plenty of people who dislike her for other reasons, and plenty of people who simply don’t like her policies very much.
I don’t believe that everyone who decides not to vote for Barack Obama is a racist, and i don’t believe that everyone who decides not to vote for Hillary Clinton is a sexist.
I don’t think it can be denied that a lot of the Hillary villification over the last couple of decades has been rooted in misogyny. Obviously that doesn’t mean that everyone who supports another candidate for the Presidency is woman hater, but I don’t think it can be disputed that she’s been the recipent of a lot of misogynist hostility.
There are frat boys going to her rallies and holding up signs that say “Iron my shirt.” If Sir Elton has been around her much, he’s probably seen some of the crap that gets thrown at her wherever she goes.
My post is my cite. I’m drawing a conclusion of inferrence from the juxtaposition of two comments with nothing else in between. “Hillary should be president,” and “the misogyny of this country might prevent her from being president.” There’s nothing evident in the article that these are contextualized by acknowledgment that there are other worthy candidates who appeal to people, or that people have legitimate concerns about Clinton both as a candidate and as a leader.
What difference does that make? From Hillary’s perspective, it’s just assholes with insulting signs. Would the defense that it was a radio prank fly very far if they’d gone to an Obama rally holding up signs that said “Shine my shoes?” I guess I don’t see what the joke is.
It’s also far, far from the only experience she’s had with blatantly misogynist hostility. my point is that, setting aside whatever effect it’s having on her candidacy (and I think the effect is non-zero), she has been the target of a lot misogynist sentiment. We can only imagine what kind of mail she’s gotten over the years.
I guess my point is that they’re not misogynistic assholes, they’re just regular old assholes.
Personally, I just think anyone trying to paint Hillary as some kind of a victim of prejudice as a woman when she’s facing off against a black man is a bit of a non-starter.
They both have people prejudiced against them for entirely unforgivable reasons, but one is not more hurt by it than the other. It’s a total wash.
I don’t know that you can say that. It may well be the case, but I’d need to see a cite breaking down the effects of various prejudices before I’d agree that neither Hillary nor Obama are being more hurt by prejudice.