Letters to the Editor
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@person
Yes. Someone *being* "down in the polls" is common parlance. But Obama said "when she *feels* down" and *you're* suggesting there follows a silent "in the polls" in that statement.
I have never read or heard someone say: "X *feels* down in the polls." (It sounds like a vererinary term). Is "*feeling* down in the polls" common parlance? And xould you please provide other examples of that rather odd-sounding phrase?
My point is that I doubt Obama meant to imply HRC "felt down in the polls". From the youtube clip I watched, I think he meant "feels down in the dumps".
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Juliebird
Which would still not make it in the least bit sexist.
Sometimes an insult is just an insult.
For example:
If one calls Thabo Mbeki (President of South Africa) an idiot, one isn't being racist. In fact, I suspect one is being factual.
To say that Hillary is willing to use negative attacks, even basing it off of her emotions, is not sexist. Or don't men have emotions?
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Juliebird
I don't understand your argument that Obama's use of "down" cannot be read in any other way than the one you suggest. He seems (clearly) to be referring to her recent losses, suggesting that she is "going negative" because she feels like she's losing the race and needs to make up some ground. "Feeling down" does not have to mean feeling depressed (especially in this context)-- and even if he meant it that way, why is that automatically a sexist attack? Are women the only ones who can "feel down" or react negatively to adverse situations? By reading this as a gendered attack, you yourself are reinscribing the same essentialized notions of gender that we feminists should be working against.
I also think it's somewhat disingenuous of you to suggest that because Obama is a skilled orator he obviously chose his words very carefully with the intention of belittling Clinton because of her gender. This was a response to a direct question about Clinton's negative ads, and it's very clear in the clip that he stumbles through his response quite ineloquently.
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Willful ignorance
This seems like a good place to tie this thread to the one going on about the dumbing down of America from a couple of days ago. Has anyone, ANYONE read Dick Morris retort to Hillary's "Living History?" Before I get buried by the head in the sand Hillary supporters, I would just like to hear where they stand on a couple of things...
-Good or bad, Hillary is not Bill and should not be confused with him
- Why lie that your mother named you after Sir Edmund Hillary when you were born long before he climbed Everest?
-Why lie about Chelsea possibly being at the twin towers on 9/11 when you knew she wasn't?
-Why lie about "knowing" hatred from when you played soccer in school, when your schools never had soccer programs when you were there?
-What happened to your billable hours at your law firm?
The point is that if you truly look at the pattern of deception and "quasi-legal" activity in the Clinton household, is this really what we want back in the White House? Good God, here's book by a former CLinton advisor that lists the woman's good and bad points, that has been probably dismissed out of hand by people who consider themselves intelligent, because it PROBABLY draws conclusions that their uninformed minds don't want to clutter themselves with. They can live with the scandals, the lies, the financial questions, as long as they don't actually have to THINK about them and what they mean about their candidate...
BTW... I'm not an Obama or Republican supporter either, my vote for President stays blank
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"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down........
With all due diffidence, I'd like to suggest that you're all wrong . I think Obama was alluding to the Beatles song, associated particularly with John Lennon, in which the following line occurs "Help me if you can, I'm feeling down and I do appreciate you being (a)round...". Obama is very good at that, linking himself to icons of the past such as JFK and MLK, while orating about the future. All that fainting and freneticism at his rallies is very like something one might expect from the Charismatic Movement, which I know involves "talking in tongues". Perhaps that explains why his words are so opaque.
I've been walking in the woods and the "only fly in the ointment" is a multitude of midges and gnats. They all look the same and make the same sound, so they're anonymous and you don't know which one has bitten you. Talking of which, some one of the Anonymouses or Anonymice wrote of Hillary Clinton's supporters as "the hairy-legged brigade" but he obviously doesn't read "Vanity Fair". Recently, I had to recoil in horror at the sight of columnist, Christopher Hitchens, having his body-hair waxed - and it wasn't just his legs. I felt so queasy after seeing this - out of the corner of my eye - that I needed a strong cup of tea spiked with whiskey. Hitchens has been slobbering over Obama too but I would not have the audacity to suggest that Hitchens' depilation and Obama's progress are in any way connected. As Sylvester Stallone, 6l, said last week "I feel the same as I did at 20 without arthritis". I hpe he hasn't got hairy legs, poor soul. I'll have to put the laptop away for a while as the birds are building their nests and I don't want to disturb them. I like Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" but we don't have any snow here.
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Bill Clinton, Misogynist
I find it intriguing that the campaign that keeps crying foul over the identity politics, sexism and misogyny also seeks to run on Bill Clinton's decidedly misogynist legacy.
Bill Clinton certainly had his virtues, but how else could you possibly characterize a man haunted one sexual harassment after another who denies everything every time but who ultimately is caught by DNA evidence in a relationship with not only a subordinate, but an intern.
Yet, rather than rejecting this legacy of misogyny and repudiating it, Senator Clinton is now running on it.I understand that Hillary is in a difficult position here, but that only underscores her inability to be standard-bearer on this particular issue. I honestly cannot understand how legitimate defenders of gender equity find this even remotely acceptable.
Has the movement leadership simply sold out its entire agenda to get the Clintons back into the Whitehouse. In no way is this campaign "feminist." In no way does it stand for "feminism."