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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Jjc2008
Published Letters: 54
When I started teaching in the late sixties, I used to tell my young students: our democracy has a safeguard, an independent press that safeguards us from become like authoritarian states where the government owns the press. Who knew that sometime around the Reagan years, our press would become the cheerleading end of the government. I was discouraged then; despondent and depressed now. In 2000, I watched with horror as a well paid press core became cheerleaders for W; gleefully trashed Al Gore.
I was stunned with the press core did not work to uncover the W who abandoned his post, while sitting back and watched a Vietnam vet be smeared. I knew the press disliked the Clintons; the disdain for Bill's poor roots in Arkansas was not even hidden.
And now, in 2008, it is 1984.
A press core campaigning for their own personal preferences; covering for criminality in government; and living their lives as a part of an oligarchy. Clearly they no longer safeguard democracy. Now they safeguard their and their friends lifestyles.
the Obama people are afraid. So even before the convention begins all over the media, the blogs, even the NYT, you are blaming Hillary, and/or Bill and Hillary.
How dare the women of the democratic, the OLD ones, the ones who worked for four decades behind the scenes, not getting to sit on panels on the tubes and show off how politically astute we are less we show up the boys; the ones who walked the walk, knocked on the doors, did the hard work; how dare us be angry that the democratic leadership gamed the election; sat on their freaking hands and allowed a leading democrat be trashed and insulted with sexism and false accusations of racism.
Now WE are angry and you are scared. So the BLAME HILLARY game is starting even before the convention. This would be funny if not so pathetically sad.
Like some you mentioned I started out in 2007 thrilled with all the candidates. I was excited. My primary choice order was Clinton/Edwards,Kucinich, Richardson, Dodd........but I always told my friends, any one would have my vote.
I am a 62 year old woman who has voted democratic all my life. And like many women my age, I have put in my hours walking the walk, going door to door to get democrats elected.
I never thought I would end up where I am now. ANGRY. I am angry as hell at the democratic party, at the media, at the male dominated blogosphere. I never in all my life thought I would see the level of sexism I saw in this campaign. MSNBC has been blocked on my television because men like Matthews and Olberman were disgusting in their personal bias. I can no long stand to even listen to misogynistic curmudgeon Cafferty. And Rachel Maddow is one of the biggest disappointment of my life.
But I am an activist and thought maybe I was listening too much, blogging too much. But then I had some lunches with my not so activists friends. And guess what. They feel like I do. ANGRY. These women who did not participate in blogging ever, but are intelligent, informed voters (all college educated with Master's degrees), felt the same thing.
It was like we were reliving something we all experienced. The more experienced, more time on the job, more organized in her thoughts with details of policy, is passed over by the younger, supposedly "more charistmatic, exciting, good looking" man.
We have lived it and now we live it again.
Instead of getting over it, we get angrier and angrier, WHY? Because the attitude of the DNC is "they have no where else to go;" the attitude of some of our own democratic Congressment is sexist (i.e. "bitter knitters); and the attitude of the Obama campaign is that we owe them our vote.
There has been no reaching out. Instead there is the implication from the Obama campaign: "oh they are just those old white women who are racists anyway; or they're just low information voters."
As long the democratic party, a party where women have been the worker bees while the men always get the "queen bee" roles, keeps kicking us in the teeth, there is a problem.
I am going to Denver tomorrow to march in honor of Hillary and in honor of the anniversary of Suffrage. I mentioned it on a blog and some young blogger (unsure of gender) says this: well go, do your Hillary thing and that "feminist thingy anniversary" and get over it. Can you imagine? They call us the low information voters and they think women getting the right to vote was some feminist thingy.
The democratic leadership has betrayed women and now instead of reaching out with honesty and a desire to unite, they are thumbing their noses at women who are angry and frustrated, not just because of Hillary, but because the democratic party has been playing games with women, and basically telling us "we don't need you because we have the kids now." Until and unless that attitude changes, more than a few of us will be rethinking our commitment to the party.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
