Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 21 Editor's Choice: 2
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Didn't read the original comments
[Read the article: Thank you, Rush Limbaugh!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but it would surprise me if the argument was "Yes, Female Politicians should be called 'Fucking Whores'" and not "It's not sexism to call a female politician a fucking whore."
I can honestly say that over the last few years, I have heard male public figures described as whores much, much, more often than females, indeed insults leveled at Ms Clinton of that kind have impact precisely because they're unusual, reflecting a removal of the gloves and a willingness to use terms that have a sexual origin with women.
This website, recall, is the one that got awfully upset and posted a hit-job on a blog called "Media Whores Online". MWO described many, many, journalists using the W word, where the logic - as it is with Clinton - was that the term applied to anyone completely willing to debase themselves and lose all integrity in order to please their "paymasters". Tim Russett and Chris Matthews were the most frequent receivers of that particular insult, and while Matthews is quite possibly some other species, both, at least on the surface, appear to be male.
Walsh needs to "get out more", the W word has a particular meaning different from its original definition, and it doesn't any longer mean "Someone who sleeps with Eliot Spitzer". Its use does reflect a lowering of the standard of discourse, a regrettable and unnecessary move away from a focus on actual issues, but its no more sexist than "Bastard" or "Shit".
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Smearing your critics, smearing your readers
[Read the article: My last word (for now) on sexism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not reading many people arguing that Clinton has never been the subject of a sexist comment, indeed most people criticising your comments have explicitly said that (a) yes, she's facing some sexism and (b) Randi Rhodes was out of line, though not necessarily making a sexist comment per-se given the general usage of the word "whore" by the left to mean "One who debases him or herself in order to please his or her paymasters."
For the most part, we critics are pissed at your, Joan, continuous exaggeration of Clinton's "sexism" problems, your embrace of Rush Limbaugh, of all people (MWO would have had a field day with that one), and your posting of pro-Clinton drivel culminating in a lead, two days ago, claiming that a fair electoral system would have ignored the popular majority Obama has and put Clinton in the lead.
Yet you pretend we're arguing something else. You pretend we're arguing out of misogyny. You pretend we're blind to sexism. You pretend that Clinton is somehow likable and that she's isn't being targeted by insults - the easiest and yet ironically least frequent being sexist - because of her unpopularity, but because she's a woman.
Here's the deal: Hillary Clinton cannot, and never has been able to, win the election. She doesn't have the respect of a substantial minority of Democrats, not because she's a woman, but because she is politically at odds with them and her honesty is questionable, and her ability to motivate a large enough number of Democrats to vote for her at the election is suspect. At the same time, she is hated by right wingers, again not because she's a woman, but because she's associated with a presidency they dislike, because she communicates poorly, and because she's associated with so-called nanny-state policies they despise. She will motivate right wingers to hold their noses and vote for McCain.
When it became clear she wasn't going to get the overwhelming majority of Democrats behind her in February, with someone who wasn't on the political radar at all four years ago beating her on most polls, it should have become obvious to everyone this was not the heir-apparent, and she will be incapable of winning the election. Instead, she's made herself even more unpopular with those who had problems with her to begin with. She's gone from someone who just wasn't anyone's first choice to someone those same people are increasingly having problems with the idea of ever voting for ever again. Now, for liberals, those people are wrong: for a liberal to deliberately help a war-mongering unstable anti-liberal like McCain into office simply because your preferred candidate didn't win is, as I've said elsewhere, ultimately, an act of treason, a betrayal of a nation of people, of your neighbors and friends and family and yourself. But I suspect most people know that, and it says something for Clinton's actions since February that so many are willing to countenance doing that.
Clinton has worked very hard to make herself intensely disliked by her critics. Some of those critics cross the line of civility. Some insults, such as those that are sexist, are easier than others.
She is not disliked because she is a woman, she is disliked because she's the Hillary Clinton that's pro-war and pro-negative campaigning. She's disliked because of apparent belief she's owed the Presidency out of some sense of entitlement. She's disliked because she wants to ban violence in videogames and because she has less talent in the inspiration category than Ben Stein.
Your critics are those pointing that out, and pointing out that not all of the comments you categorize as sexist are sexist, that even the sexist insults are aimed at her because her critics just plain don't like her, not because they're misogynist. Your critics are those pointing out that there's nothing to be proud of cosying up to a misogynist, racist, crypto-fascist like Limbaugh, especially when he's in the middle of an overt campaign to help split the Democratic Party. And your critics are pointing out that your pro-Clinton coverage walked off the grounds of rationality a long time ago.
By smearing your readers as "defending sexism" or "not seeing it" and refusing to listen to your critics, you're making a mockery of Salon as the leading online Liberal magazine of today. If we are to take you at your word, you have no idea how much damage you're doing, to Salon, to the chances of keeping McCain out of power in November, and to liberalism itself.