Letters to the Editor
Picko
Published Letters: 272 Editor's Choice: 11
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@ saintzak
[Read the article: Clinton: "They're piling on because I'm winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh, I understood your point - it was to take a cheap shot. And to cover for the fact that your cheap shot was a somewhat nasty misogynistic one, you have to insult my intelligence and pretend that it was accidental that you chose Britney Spears instead of Tom Cruise.*
The funny thing is, I'm not even a Hillary supporter. I haven't really made up my mind whom I'm going to support. For you to assume that I'm going to support Hillary and further to insinuate that, if I do, I'm going to do it based on her gender is very presumptious. Or was the purpose merely to shift the focus away from your embarrassingly misogynistic remark onto me?
*(I do have to point out the silliness of this claim - after all, wasn't some of the "cleverness" of the comparison based on the vague similarity between the name "Hillary" and "Britney?")
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@ saintzak
[Read the article: Clinton: "They're piling on because I'm winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm fully aware of what I've been posting. Yes, I've been defending Hillary - I freely admit that - but that doesn't mean I've made up my mind as to whom I'm going to support in primaries. I think I've said that repeatedly thoughout my posts. The only thing I've made up my mind about is that I'm going to support the eventual Democratic nominee, whoever that is. Right now it looks like that's going to be Hillary, but if the other candidates do their jobs, that could change. I think I've said at least a half dozen times that I have real reservations about her. But I would think that if you have such "clear, strong reasoned, no-nonsence [sic]" rationales for not supporting her, you should be able to convince other people without cheap ad hominem attacks. Good luck.
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I guess it depends on how you define the "American people"
[Read the article: Cheney in the bubble]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, since people from New York, Massachusetts, San Francisco, etc. aren't "real Americans," the polling data that includes citizens from those places really distorts the actual numbers...
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@ 6Stringer
[Read the article: Clinton: "They're piling on because I'm winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Of course it's ridiculous to say that everybody who doesn't support Hillary is a sexist. But I think it's true - especially after reading through a lot of the anti-Hillary posts that have been made during this whole controversy - that some people who are deeply antagonistic towards her are so because of her sex. To be fair, many - probably even the majority - of people who oppose her do so for the same reason they opposed her husband - for sound policy reasons, or character issues. I think that's 100% valid and those arguments should be made. But every time I read a post where someone compares her to Britney Spears or claims that she shouldn't be president because she couldn't stand up to Middle East leaders who think she should wear a burka, I begin to think, "hey, maybe she's onto something."
This whole brouhaha has been very instructive to me, in a way. I actually didn't think sexism was as much of a problem as it is. But when I read of lot of these posts, which decried playing the "gender card" while at the same doing so in very sexist language, I realized that maybe I wrong.
Salon has featured several articles about how gender plays a role in politics. The obsession with "toughness" and the feminization of Democrats like Kerry, Edwards, etc. are part of it. I think it's absurd that news magazines run cover stories with the headline "Is America ready for a woman president?" The gender card is played every day, not only in American politics, but in the everyday life of women everywhere. We only call it "playing the gender card" when someone is indelicate enough to point out what game we're playing.
I thought all along that Hillary was trying to use this to her benefit. Why did she think this would work? First of all, it worked for her in New York in 2000. Second of all, even if she is using it manipulatively, sexism is a very real thing - the "gender card" works the same way the "race card' works, by playing off of very real grievances. The fact that Hillary was cynically using charges of sexism for political purposes does not mean that sexism itself is an illusion. If women didn't really think they were treated like second-class citizens in American society, there would be no gender card to play.
Remember, there are slightly more women than men in American, but women - particularly single women - vote in lower proportions than men. If you're a woman candidate, who can expect to suffer from the loss of votes from men due your gender, you have to make up the difference somewhere. And maybe the Clinton campaign just used a particularly hamfisted approach to try to do this. I have to say, though, that if I were a woman, the ugly sexist tone of quite a few of anti-Hillary postings in response to this whole affair might make me identify with her after all.