Letters to the Editor
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I have a been a good to whites all my life considering the alternatives which were there...
VIVA OBAMA..UNITED WE STAND..VIVA OBAMA..UNITED WE STAND.....
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The most interesting part of Steinem's OpEd is where she insists younger women are blind and stupid and disloyal and never recognizes the alternative, maybe feminism has succeed and younger women recognize that
What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.
The alternative is that Steinem and others largely succeeded. That pay equity is no longer a problem, that sexual harassment is no longer a problem, and that women no longer face barriers in career or social advancement. That feminism may still be needed, but not in the "I am victim hear me whine" mode that it has claims, and the "I am bully you better STFU" mode that most people experience it as.
What does Occam's Razor tell you?
That young women are stupid, blind and disloyal?
That young women have observed a reality and reacted intelligently?
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Sexism goes both ways
It is risky to equate sexism with racism, and yet I do. I think they are both -- along with things like ageism -- equally horrid.
Well, sexism goes both ways. It is sexist to suggest your candidate is losing because of her gender and not because of her strategy. That is, to suggest that Obama is winning because he is a man. If Obama were a woman, he will not receive these comments and everybody would praise him (that is, her) for the way (s)he has been able to manage the campaign.
This is why Gloria Steinem is a sexist woman.
Sexism is giving the custody of children 90% to the woman, regardless of the individual merit of each parent.
Sexism is that only men pay when dating.
Sexism is wanting special privileges for being women. Like quotas in some countries when it comes to politics (there are no quotas in dangerous professions, like army or firemen, who are dominated by men).
Sexism is saying "Women-good, man-bad". This is why feminism is sexism.
And you are right. Sexism is horrid. Not like racism (after all, there have not been slaves because of sex) but it is horrid.
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AKA Smith: Slow down I have been accused of playing the race card with Obama
that is why I have so much passion right now for a new day when as a black activist my life will change!!!
You have no idea the wieght on the shoulders of Black leaders like me....
Slow down and enjoy this threshold moment..life as we know it as black folks is about to change in a big way!!!!!
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Whitey
Thrasher's right, why should he be good to whites? Whites suck now and always have. It is always the same game just different words. The whites said to the Native Americans and the indigenous peoples of the Earth, "Here, beads are worth the same as your lands, oh, and we won't kill you or enslave you," then they killed and enslaved. Our founding fathers said, "All men are created equal," then they preceded to treat all men differently based on race. The same is going on today. "Here, take Democracy and Liberty, it is the best," all just so whitey can get his greedy, soiled hands on more resources and minds (and more economic slaves). The game is for global supremacy and complete control and whitey is still winning.
I am whitey and I don't want whitey to win. Good rule of thumb: never root for the winner, it is too easy.
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Obama in Illinois - the truth
Jackie R I live in Illinois and no Obama didn't just win cuz the repubs were wackos - he exploded in the Democratic primary just like he is doing in the primaries right now and won easily without a runoff over establishment candidates to everyone's surprise. THEN the Repubs imploded but it wouldn't have made a difference who they ran. He was going to win, just like he will do in November.
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More Obama in Illinois
To echo what Steve said, Illinois has 102 counties and when Obama won his Senate seat, he did so with the support of something like 97 of them. That's a lot of "red" counties. It's not like he eked out a win, he had virtaully the whole state behind him.
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@ AKA Smith, Catherine Price & other Clinton supporters
If Obama was a white woman, I would still vote for him/her.
And if Hillary was a black man, I would still NOT vote for her/him.
Forget race and gender - for me (and many of my progressive peers), it is an issue of tired, old-guard career-politician psuedo-centrism VS. new-blooded, unjaded, open-minded liberalism that does not paint the other half of America as the enemy (while simultaneously giving their leaders a blank check for unjust wars).
Someday, there will be a woman president. (And she will have earned the presidency because of merit - and not because she simply felt ordained to earn the title.)
But for now, the young progressive adults in our country - male and female, feminists, minorities, Caucasian and/or all other groups - will cheer for the only person in this nomination race who dares to break from the old Dem dogma: Barack Hussein Obama.
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Sna?!
Starting off with the biography of a fictional female version of Obama (i.e., lawyer, mother of two, inspirational voice for national unity), she asks, "Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?"
This made me think of another, strangely similar story: lawyer, mother of one, married down to a poor white-trash kid from Arkansas, and with nothing aside from experience as helpmate to his long trek out of obscurity, and barely more than one term of her own in the US Senate, she tries to run for President.
To think that such a woman could ever make it to the primaries, let alone set the pace as an early leader and make herself the "to-beat" candidate for her rivals! Ridiculous, isn't it?
(Not to mention a lawyer, mother — while a law student even! — and clerk who has the audacity to seek a Supreme Court position — or an Italian grandmother trying for Speaker of the House! Ha ha ha! What a laugh.)
But Steinem isn't content with showing us how the sexism of her more active years is so unchanged and so monolithic that there's no way that Hillary Clinton (or Ginsburg or Pelosi) could exist today. She also needs to tell us that race is definitely lower than sex in the hierarchy of oppression:
Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot ...
And nothing, surely, during that half-century or indeed the half-century that followed after could suggest that black men in America were anything but blissfully content about the ease and physical safety with which they could cast their votes and participate in public discourse. Nobody was disenfranchised, beaten, tortured, mutilated, hung, or burned. In fact their experience was a perfect foreshadowing of the uneventful integration of women into American political life in the 1920s.
In all seriousness, Gloria Steinem may be one of those people whose tremendous past work entitles her to a certain amount of nodding and smiling when, in old age, they start rambling — but this is beyond the pale.
If she had stuck to a more closely argued point about message — women in politics have to project toughness while their male counterparts "get" to project softness — maybe she could have retained that privilege.
Instead, it's almost as if Steinem is pissed because Obama cut in line. He gets to skip past all of Clinton's hard work and good-girl diligence — isn't that just like a boy? — and straight to the front of the pack. Steinem doesn't consider that he did so for exactly the same reason that Clinton has had to work so hard in the first place — he literally earned his place at the table through a single feat of oratory and a single round of fundraising which were by themselves beyond anything Clinton has ever been, or likely will ever be, able to achieve. At her best she's an adequate public speaker, and she sincerely doesn't like the new grassroots and never will. It's a testament to the fact that she really is a strong, disciplined campaigner — in addition to being a sharp policymaker — that she's doing as well as she is.
No pretending to be tough is necessary for Clinton, as hard as it may be for a second-waver like Steinem to accept. If anything, Obama has had to prove that he's as tough as she is before people started to take him seriously.