My Jewish friends have said to me repeatedly that comparison of obnoxious, vicious, nasty people to Nazis who systematically tried to exterminate the Jews is minimizing the experience of Jews (and other victims of the Nazis) and is really not okay.

Rufus, do you realize that you're being a little incoherent?

Signed,

A doddering old lady who loves gossip

So, and I'm posting this with respect, would you equate your experience as a white person with watching and witnessing an African American person being beat up or discrminated against with the experience of being actually beat up? That's the difference between the angst and anguish of an ally and the experience of being oppressed....

Susan

So, I'm inspired to start having panels about what it was like to be a teenager in the late 1960s. Women could not be senate pages. Women could not go to the military service academies.

During the 1960s several federal laws improving the economic status of women were passed. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required equal wages for men and women doing equal work. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against women by any company with 25 or more employees. A Presidential Executive Order in 1967 prohibited bias against women in hiring by federal government contractors.

But discrimination in other fields persisted. Many retail stores would not issue independent credit cards to married women. Divorced or single women often found it difficult to obtain credit to purchase a house or a car.

Although many of these egregious problems have been corrected, we are still in the slow lane of progress about women's equality.

I could post a similar timeline about racism.

We can't ignore identity politics, because the Republicans won't. What we have to do is point out racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination energetically and clearly so that John McCain doesn't get to dip into the easy well of racism and sexism.

Susan

Uh.....does the left on Salon support the state of Israel in its repression of Palestine? What am I missing?

For those who are interested in a truly progressive approach, to to zeitounamovie.org.

susan

Whoa.....this is ridiculous....

Obama made a simple mistake. It's not a lie. He was talking about how a member of his family was unable to deal with life (going into the attic for 6 months) after seeing a death camp.

I really don't think most of the country (outside of the republican blogosphere) cares about this nonsense. We're too busy worry about jobs, gas prices, and the war.

But of course, I don't think that Sen. Clinton was suggesting that Sen. Obama might be assasinated either, so the silliness is not just restricted to the Repubs.

A response to ErinIrene and others...

What really upsets me is the ongoing sexist malice of the left.

I expect it from the right. I expect attacks on Clinton to subtly or overtly play into societal prejudices and myths about women. ( I EXPECT right wing fundamentalist preachers to be racist, and sexist, and homophobic.... I want to believe that the left is different.)

It's open season (among the mostly male Progressive left) right now on white women. White women are an easy target, because how could they possibly be oppressed? Aren't they all rich? Aren't they all married? Aren't they all able-bodied?

What's fascinating to me is that those who are taking this opportunity to bash white women really couldn't care less about women of color. They are USING sexism to destroy Clinton.

The idea that is being promulgated (right here on salon) is that an African American man is always going to be "more oppressed" than a European American woman.

The male progressive left keeps missing the boat and keeps ignoring state of the art analysis and philosophy -- there is no hierarchy of oppression. If you would bother to read leading feminists of color, you might have heard that message already.

Of course Obama is oppressed because of his race. Of course Clinton is oppressed because of her gender. That's reality. If you don't believe it, go on and be a republican. Go where you belong.

The right wing assumed for a long, long time that Clinton would get the nomination. They have ridiculed, trashed and denigrated her in the same way that the press and the bigots denigrated and trashed Eleanor Roosevelt. They have used her gender against her in every possible way...she's a nutcracker.

What exactly does that mean, people on the left? It means that because she's a strong woman, she must hate men, want to dominate them, what to cut off their penises, and crush their testicles. Isn't that what this joke/parody is about? Portraying women as either sweet, sexy, and subservient or ugly, nasty, and man haters? Isn't this sexist? Isn't this a way to force women to fulfill men's needs -- you know the ones that men are entitled to, service, subservience, sweetness, niceness... This is the way society pushes girls and women into certain roles -- because girls and women know if they step out of them they will be treated as Clinton has been treated.

Sexism exists (say it ten times people on the left). It happens daily. The oppression of women is staring you right in the face.

Too bad the left can't refrain from copying the right. Too bad the left is being mean spirited, cruel, sexist and vicious. Too bad the boys on the left don't "get" that sexism and racism are intertwined, inseparable, the way that the white men on top, the ones with the billions of dollars, are keeping everyone under control. It's the way they keep Republicans in power so that the Republicans can allow them to continue to rape the environment for profit, and to brutalize and sell women and children.

When Clinton concedes, and Obama is the nominee, the right wing will turn around and use racism and ethnocentrism in every possible way against him. They've already started.

So, now, what about how sexism played out in the primaries?