Letters to the Editor
JackSparx
Published Letters: 433 Editor's Choice: 16
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Bashing? How about speaking truth to power.
[Read the article: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Clinton has always had to count on the white male vote to win (see Pennsylvania). The outrage from white feminists that white men (and women) might vote for a black man has been voiced by Stenem and Walsh and others since Iowa.
The outrage has not shamed men into consistently voting for Clinton. Men (and women) of conscience have not bought into the inherently racist logic that they owe a white woman their vote, or that the black candidate should get in line behind the white.
People, including men, who "bash" Clinton feel that they are doing something profoundly different: They feel they are speaking truth to power. The Clintons are powerful in every way imaginable. He was President for eight years, she is a Senator. They are rich beyond the wildest dreams of any of us. They are connected with the worlds elites, and have used those connections not only to enrich themselves, but to swat down critics in the press and elsewhere. Hillary Clinton is one of the most powerful people in the world by far.
Some feminists (not all) have simply not understood a world where women have gained some share of real power, and with it, responsibility for the consequences of their actions. These in-denial feminists engage in a double-think, where Clinton gets credit for any positive exercise of her power, but all of her mistakes result from victimization from men. The logic holds that Clinton cannot victimize people, because she herself is victimized by virtue of her gender status. But Clinton's exercise of real power has had real world negative consequences for others.
People know that a we-victims-can-do-no-harm philosophy would be trouble in a President. Voters have tried to determine the extent to which either candidate believes their gender or racial identity exempts them from accountability while exercising the immense powers of the American presidency. For most of us, Clinton fails the accountability test miserably.
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We have a right to feel bitter. We have a right to feel hope.
[Read the article: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We have a right to mourn our brothers and sisters dead in the Bush-Clinton war.
We have a right to speak truth to the power.
We have a right to express our feelings even if some feminists say that we do not.
We have a right to vote our consciences.
We have a right to reject bullshit, no matter the gender or race of those who lie.
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@Xrandadu
[Read the article: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Salon and Walsh do deserve criticism for the strange editorial emphasis during this primary season. I hope Joan Walsh will be more forthcoming with her motives and such as the election continues."
I agree that Salon's emphasis has been strange. For a long time we learned little of Obama was that he was multiracial. Over and over, making him seem somehow sinister in his multiple identites. Then the focus turned to Clinton, and guess what, she's a victimized woman.
Walsh's motives are not good, but I rather doubt that Obama lost any votes from the skewed coverage. Probably the opposite.
Walsh bragged that readership was up, and perhaps that's true. I think Salon has become a bit like those classic "investigative" reports on network TV that were meant to titillate rather than inform. Salon has hit on a formula of dramatizing the old black man-white woman mythology in a way that appeals to intellectuals. Coupled with the new garish ads, it may even be profitable. We're all suckers. But, Salon is a business I guess.
What makes it bizarre is the moral posturing. It reminds me that the snake oil salesmen of the 19th century often doubled as preachers.
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So long Salon
[Read the article: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There was a time in my life when I used to go to a particular bar which attracted colorful characters, intellectual types. We'd have the craziest conversations. But then one week I didn't go, and never went again. Maybe I'd heard the same talk too many times, maybe I'd made the same talk too many times. I didn't change my habit because the bar had changed, but because it hadn't changed enough. What had felt liberating now felt confining. I think that's what's happened to me with Salon.
Maybe it's because I feel I'm done thinking about candidate choices in this campaign. I expected to vote for any Democrat who came along, but now I think I'll just vote for Obama. I'll write him in if necessary, though I don't think it will come to that. I even think he has a chance to squeak a victory in Pennsylvania, even now. I see Obama as a decent sort, possibly a great President, though we can't know. I compromise some beliefs to vote for him, but I'm no longer willing to compromise so much as to vote for a candidate with Clinton's character. She's lost me completely.
I really wish the primary had ended earlier, not just so Democrats could have united to trash talk McCain, but to creatively think aloud about how we can confront so many problems at once. I don't think these conversations can happen in Salon. The mindset here is 1970s, with identity politics structuring and dominating all political debates. It's telling that the elitists at Salon quickly turned the class debate in Pennsylvania to race, then gender.
Presidents almost always face challenges very different than the issues that got them elected. I suspect that one of those issues will be dramatic changes in resource use patterns and the environment, particularly as these changes affect social classes differently. I think the left will be deeply divided on the decisions we will need make, but we're hardly even discussing them. We don't even have the rudiments of a structure to discuss these issues.
But sex and race sells, and I love trash, even trashy intellectualism.
Up to a point.
Bye.