Letters to the Editor
Picko
Published Letters: 265 Editor's Choice: 11
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juneau
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's petition ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Could you show me where I subjected you personally to derision - rather than merely criticize the points you were making? Maybe it's where I suggested that you gave women little credit for caring about issues if you believed that they would enable a McCain victory if Hillary wasn't the nominee? Please explain why this is an unwarranted conclusion to draw from your statements. Hillary's supporters make a rather tiresome case that they are the hard-headed realists who are interested in issues, whereas Obama supporters are merely swept away by cult of personality and pretty speeches. Now, if Hillary supporters are indeed as passionate about policy as they claim, they would realize that Obama is a lot closer to HIllary on matters of policy than McCain is. The instance I adduce - abortion - is chosen because (a) it is indisputable that there will be radically different consequences from a McCain presidency than there would be from either of the Democrats, and (b) it is an issue that most of the women I know are rather passionate about. In order for a woman to stay home on election day and enable to a McCain victory, she would have to (a) block out of her mind the fact that a McCain presidency will overturn Roe v. Wade; or (b) know this fact but decide that the right to have an abortion is insignificant compared to the political ambitions of Hillary Clinton. On the issue of the war, she must say to herself that 4 more years in Iraq is worth the price for getting back at god-knows-who for all the perceived slights against HIllary Clinton. On the economy, she must say to herself that it's better to have a president (McCain) whose economic policies (insofar as they exist) exacerbate our problems rather than solve them, than it is to have that horrible man who beat our Hillary.
To put this in perspective, I have said roughly the same thing when my sister told me that her husband would vote for McCain over Obama: "Well, I guess he must not really care about the environment." For context, her husband is a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, so I was basically saying that his entire career was a sham. Because if McCain is president, his Supreme Court nominee is most likely going to belong to the Scalia/Alito/Roberts/Thomas axis, many of whom believe that environmental regulation is actually unconstitutional.
I don't think these conclusions are based on speculation. They're based on elementary logic. I see that you haven't bothered to actually rebut the substance of what I've said. It is true that you didn't explicitly state any of these assumptions, but they are implicit in what you've written. Don't Hillary supporters constantly draw the same sort of inference when they make charges of sexism? Seldom is the Hillary-basher explicitly saying "I oppose Hillary Clinton because she is a woman," but often you can legitimately draw the conclusion based on what they've said. Couldn't the accused Clinton-basher turn around and say "How intellectual you are to draw all those conclusions on my assumptions which I did not state!" To be clear, the inference I am making is this: "If Hillary's supporters do not support a candidate who is virtually the same policywise, and as a consequence enable the election of a candidate who embraces policies in direct opposition of hers, they must care less about policy than they do about the person of HIllary Clinton." If this is an unwarranted inference, please explain why.
As for the issue of sexism, there's no point in even pretending that HIllary hasn't been unfairly vilified because of her sex. But I don't see evidence that the Obama campaign has been abetting the problem. It seems to me that Obama's big offense against feminism is beating Hillary when she was supposed to be the designated nominee. I would certainly sympathize with Clinton-supporters if they were upset that their candidate wasn't nominated even though she won in pledged delegates or popular vote - but it seems weird to demand that your candidate be the nominee even when the voting results are not in her favor. Under what circumstances, by your analysis, would Hillary supporters be satisfied with any result other than having Hillary be the nominee?
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Electro Robot
[Read the article: The problem with comparing Obama to Tiger Woods]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I would have compared Obama to Jesus or Buddha
His followers do."
How clever! That must be only the 500th time you've made some version of that joke on the Salon letters page.
You really do live up to your name, Robot. Although, could I suggest that Broken Record would be an even better moniker?
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Elephantman
[Read the article: The problem with comparing Obama to Tiger Woods]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, you're so right! If you watch the statement in context, you can TOTALLY tell that the speaker meant it as a huge compliment!
And that nasty self-congratulatory chortle that rippled through the crowd immediately afterwards was obviously just a shared acknowledgement of what a true champion the audience think Obama is!
God, those liberals - always trying to twist things to make Republicans look bad!!
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Elephantman
[Read the article: The problem with comparing Obama to Tiger Woods]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"As for the rest of my post, what do you think about the Obama advance staff moving kids around so that they get the desired appearance of a racial mix?"
Are you kidding? I think all political campaigns do that. White politicians pose with their non-white supporters in the background all the time in order to show that they have a diverse following.
Sometimes this is even taken to comical extremes, as in 2004 when George Bush had on his campaign website a section entitled "Compassion" which was entirely devoted photos of him posing with black people.
No, I'm not particularly shocked that political events are staged like this.