I’m sure this is helping.
Why are those fat-assed dumb girls mad at us? Is it that time of the month? Am I right?
:: goes up for high five::
Fat, mean and bitter is no way to go through life, son.
Fair enough. I had the wrong picture of history in mind and retract the suggestion.
It was a reasonable thought on your part, and a lot of people think that way. I just don’t think we should consider only judges and professors as candidates for the Supreme Court. The Court can use smart folks with a broader range of life experiences.
On the other hand, I just learned that Hillary failed the DC bar exam. That wouldn’t look too good for a Supreme Court candidate.
(She later passed the Arkansas bar exam.)
No, I can’t, and I agree that it’s not normally done to go so far as to recommend the opposing party’s candidate. But as I said, I’ve gotten accustomed to every candidate going for blood and so it doesn’t faze me when they do - when it comes to professional issues.
(An example of what would be over-the-top to me was back in the 70s - Eagleson, I believe, whose treatment for depression was used against him.) Or, more to the point, if Obama had made direct statements or even hints that perhaps Clinton had trouble with telling the truth or other ethical issues (those of you who are - and not all of you are - very anti-Clinton would be able to mention a few, no doubt) I would think it was just part of the game and not pay attention.
I generally assume that every candidate is in it to win doing whatever it takes and I rarely pay attention to their statements about each other. That’s why I choose without the personality politics, as I said earlier, by looking at the issues.
I think that Washington has been perceived as functioning on a sort of seniority system in which hopeful candidates sort of ‘wait their turn’. Obama, who IIRC had said in 2004 that he didn’t plan to run in 2008, comes on strong and my guess is that some of Clinton’s supporters believed that he hadn’t paid his dues as long as she had. To me, this isn’t an Obama-specific objection; you see the same thing at the office, for example, when the new guy comes in and wins the promotion over older employees. There’s going to be resentment for a while until the new guy is better-known to the employees as a good guy. I do think that all the candidates in the primary had earned the right to be there, including Clinton, including Obama.
Your last paragraph highlights something I have thought about, also. I said before that I never believed Clinton was electable and much of it is baggage from her years in Washington, but the rest is the public perception of her as being a ball-breaking female.
I have been wondering over the last few days about the woman who finally will be elected President. I think she’ll be a ‘safe’ Republican like Kay Bailey Hutchison or Elizabeth Dole, safe in the sense that she will look, act, and speak as the general public believes a woman should. If she’s Republican, she won’t have as much resistance from her own party (I hope) and if she’s good, she’ll get crossover voters who do want to see a woman as President.
Yep, this can be so subtle a lot of people might not notice it. In my line of work there are roughly equal numbers of men and women and none of my male colleagues would ever say anything crass (“Check out those hooters”) or insulting (“Well, for a woman you really…”). I think that lots of people assume that it’s only that kind of treatment that wears women down.
As many of my female colleagues have observed the guys where we work have this odd way of being worshipful of and highly attentive to each other–especially older men toward charismatic fairly young guys whom the former seem to think of as younger “alphas” of some sort. The men in their 20s and early 30s will look up adoringly to these still-young mentors and so, of course, do the young women. There’s nothing that women peers can do other than by amused by this dynamic whic has all sorts of odd ramifications.
By contrast, as a woman at that mid-career stage you have to be really careful; you don’t want to come across as mommyish to the younger men, condescending to the younger women, or threatening to the older men. You have to find all kinds of ways to make the authority that you’ve accrued work at all of these levels. It can be exhausting.
I quite agree: politics is a different ballgame and yet the most miffed supporters are probably identifying with HRC and feeling sour grapesish toward Obama in part because of this kind of experience.
Here’s a snip from an interesting column that Susan Faludi wrote a few weeks back trying to explain HRC’s surprising appeal among white males.
"*To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end. …
For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun. …
… Certainly through the many early primaries, Hillary Clinton was often defined by these old standards, and judged harshly. She was forever the entitled chaperone.
…In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender. …
Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, [the ruthless brawler] is the more trusted archetype. Whether Senator Clinton’s pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude. When a woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys."*
I see your point about HRC’s baggage; but I also think it’s kind of hard for me to visualize the sort of Democratic woman who will be able to pull it off. Who will be feminine enough not to raise hackles but also tough enough to be entrusted with foreign policy and so forth? As Suse has said, it will be easier for a Republican to pull off.
Well, my guess is that the Pumas themselves are probably a numerically small group. What’s significant about them as I see it isn’t their numbers but the way they might serve as a kind of window into the feelings that more typical women supporters (and perhaps some men as well) are experiencing in less exaggerated form. These would be people who need extra motivation to vote; or maybe independent voters who need extra motivation to swing Democrat.
Perhaps, but by the same token everyone can feed into the enthusiasm and sincere welome of others. It can feel good to decide to join a winning team after playing hard to get for a while ;).
Sure but while I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t be free to speak your mind in this thread, I think you’d agree that this approach isn’t the way to win anyone over, right?
As I’ve said in other threads, it seems to me that Elizabeth Edwards possesses all the qualities a successful female Democratic presidential candidate ought to possess. She seems to me a much better politician than her husband. She is tough but still comes across as kind-hearted and pleasant, and she is whip-smart.
I wish she were running for something.
Someone whose primary experience is not as “the wife of…”
Someone who really rose through traditional ranks (Congressperson, Senator or Governor)
Someone with real-world business experience
Someone with foreign-policy cred
Someone who draws attention AWAY from her gender
The only one of these that Hillary genuinely has, the foreign policy cred, is light (Senate committee work). She holds a Senate seat now, of course, but her path there is non-existent, and a lot of voters, me included, hold that against her and always will.
Exuding charm, modesty, and being able to able to smile in public like you’re actually happy never hurt any politician, either, of course.
I’m eager for the day that I can vote for a female candidate who’s not Hillary.
I think as several posters noted, using FOX New as ‘proof’ is a double edged sword. I think the difference between their treatment of Clinton and Obama is simply a matter of how society views race and gender.
I don’t think it’s just a matter of being able to be blatant in their sexism, more but a matter of being able to be subtle in their racism, because their veiwers ‘get it’, they don’t have to have Fox news describe Obama, as a scary black man…they just have to show Wright over and over and over again.
With Clinton, they had to do it heavy handed or their viewers might have missed it. THey needed to use a narrative, while with Obama; just the visual worked.
FOX’s latest: Calling Michele Obama, Obama’s baby mama.
Racism? You see they don’t have to hit their viewers over the head with the type of stuff, they did with Clinton…all they have to do is use a few typed words and they can race-bait. All they have to do is show 30 seconds of video and they can race-bait.
I really think that when you see the blatant sexism in the media towards Clinton, yo have to realize that their was just as much subtle and not so subtle racism towards Obama and note how he and his supporters reacted to it.
Strikes me as sexism first.
I looked it up and it means the mother of a child born out of wedlock (or committed marriage) so in this case absolutely inappropriate and a slander.
While the above definition has nothing to do with sex it originated in Jamaican Creole and looks like some hip-hop artists have co-opted it for their lyrics in recent years (cite). So, perhaps since the black community seems to have taken some ownership of the term, it drifts into racism as well so a double whammy for FOX.
EDIT: As an aside does having a female anchor and an ethnic female pundit say this stuff somehow soften the blow or make it “ok”? I’d say no but then I bet if it were men doing that the anger at it would be much greater.
“Baby mama” is both racist and sexist in my view. It’s vile Fox trash–and they just love this stuff. Notice too how Michelle Malkin (the same one who said Hillary’s experience made her look 92-years old in a previous link) deliberately attributed the origin of the attacks on Michelle Obama to Hillary Clinton supporters. See how they love to fan the flames of all this? They can have their cake and eat it they “cover” the story of how “Hillary Clinton supporters” say this or that about the Obamas. Fox also loves getting women and people of color to say things that are objectionable to women and people of color. Yay, Fox. :rolleyes:
It would only be a doubled edged sword if someone were claiming that sexism lost HRC the race–but no one is making that argument. As far as I can tell we’re discussing sexism mainly because it’s a big factor in stoking “the white hot fury”–and perhaps in part because some people just don’t see it as a problem any more.
Way back on p.1 I said that IMO racism and sexism are inevitably quite different because these things are always specific to particular contexts. I still think that’s so. I always feel a bit uncomfortable saying anything that implies that these two very particularized problems can we weighed and measured against one another.
That said, I feel quite certain that if the overt kinds of sexism seen on FOX (as well as MSNBC and CNN) were taboo (as overt racism generally is), you’d see subtle forms of sexism as well.
spoke that is interesting about Eliz Edwards. Can’t say I know her resume.
Nor do I, beyond the fact that she’s an attorney, like her husband. I can’t comment on her qualifications, only on her political skills. Which are considerable, in my opinion.
Well, when the ethnic female pundit in question has written a book in defense of the internment of the Nisei during WWII, I don’t know that it softens anything. Malkin is a pox on civilization…
Aren’t they? Arent there supporters who believe just that and use FOX news reports as proof of media bias?
Yes, I know you’re not. The double edged sword is in using mostly FOX clips to show sexism against Hillary and not acknowlegding that they did the same thing with Obama; using different methods.If Fox was treating Hillary and Obama the same way and I believe they were. If both groups have a history of being ignored, of being denied and of finally having a chance at the big ring; then what separates the two groups?
Victory and defeat or how their candidates handled victory and defeat?
IMO you can’t claim that “ism” was a big factor in this anger, when another group was subjected to it too, but isn’t angry. AsI said, I don’t believe for one moment, if Clinton had won and Obama lost (fair and square), the African-American community would be up in arms screaming that they weren’t listened to or being disrepected, unless Obama encouraged them to; like Clinton has.
You want to know what the disconnect for me is? I want one of you to say, “Yes Hillary Clinton pushed the buttons, Hillary Clinton fed the fires and that’s a main component for the anger.” She didn’t cause the sexism, hell I bet it’s under-reported; but she used it to gain points not for women but for herself. If you’re really concerned about women’s rights that should give you pause.
Okay holmes, I see your point now. But I don’t think you’re going to get any disagreement that Puma is not a model of rationality or effective feminist practice.
A really interesting column for readers of this thread.
Very interesting indeed. Spot on, as far as I’m concerned. Some fascinating tidbits, too, like:
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve become a fan of Frank Rich since this campaign started. He seems to know his stuff.
And CONGRATULATIONS on becoming an official Member. Welcome!
You’re welcome, thanks and I love Rich too.