Letters to the Editor
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Hillary's Campaign Tricks
First Clinton race bates her opponent by letting her henchmen talk about 'Barak Hussain Obama' with emphasis on the second name.
Then when she gets in trouble. She sobs and wins a primary on the sympathy vote. Now her spin doctors are talking about her great victory.
Yet, according to the NYTimes exit poll, the same Democrats who voted for Clinton thought that her opponent had a better chance of beating the Reps.
Maureen Dowd says it best today in her NYTimes column. She compares Hillary Clinton to Nixon and ponders, "Will Hillary cry her way to the White House?"
Bobby Joe
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Hits the nail on the head
What a great article by Rebecca Traister! I have been surprised how no one has commented in such detail about the chauvenistic coverage of Hillary Clinton's campaign. At one point Chris Matthews was criticizing the way she nodded her head for goodness sake! He froths at the mouth over every aspect of her campaign and speaks glowingly about the Obama magic and how he reminds him of Jack Kennedy. Even Tom Brokaw was questioning the authenticity of her tears on Monday.
Let's face it, men are positively scared to death of having a woman in the most powerful position in the world. They simply cannot accept the fact that we now have a female candidate who is completely qualified to lead. Today Chris started fanning the flames of racism by claiming that the women who voted for Hillary just didn't want a black man to win. Give me a break!
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A Black Eye for Feminism!
This is not going be a quote that says 'I'm a feminist But...." as in "I'm a feminist BUT I'm voting for the establishment candidate anyway..."
No. I'm a feminist AND as I comprehend it, the core of feminism is justice. When Clinton claimed to embody change Because she is a woman, that was in injustice. When she claimed she embodied change Because she has a 35 year record of public service (which includes working as a lawyer at Rose Law firm in Arkansas, the wife of a sitting president, and a lackluster Senate career) that was an injustice.
One of the frustrating things is that the media seems to equate emotion with truth. All people get emotional at times. Did Al Gore get choked up about losing the election in 2000 in his film An Inconvenient Truth? I seem to remember Gore getting choked up but I thought it more had to do with his frustration with not being able to change the consensus on global warming.
Is no one else bothered by Clinton's continuous conflation of herself and the feminist movement? Feminists do not--or should not--vote for candidates solely because they have female body parts. One of the biggest black-eyes in Clinton's campaign for me was her false mailing about Obama that went out two days before the New Hampshire primary, falsely challenging his record on protecting women's right to choose. She used a feminist issue to falsely charge a candidate with not being feminist enough. (For the record, Obama's credentials are sterling: with all Women's Right to Choose Groups he has a 100% rating). Dishonest negative campaigning should not elect a president, regardless of that person's body parts.
Feminists, if another candidate was the first person in the nationally televised debate to mention that they WANTED to use nuclear weapons in the war against terror--if a different candidate refused to take responsibility for their war vote, blaming other people and refusing to even acknowledge that they had made a mistake--if another candidate claimed victim status every time their record was questioned, their character discussed, their authority challenged--would this person be considered a leader? A role model? Feminism is not about having the right body parts. If you want to embody something as a feminist, embody justice.
Finally, I have been a lifelong acolyte of Gloria Steinem, but I was ashamed of the piece she wrote for Hillary in the New York Times. She demonstrated the worst aspects of second wave feminism, namely a covert assumption that feminism belongs more to white middle class women than it does to anyone else. (It doesn't). Or her conflation of feminist with a person who is a woman. (It isn't). Steinem's piece defends Clinton not because of Clinton's stance on the issues, not because of her record in truth-telling, but because of her dubious 35 years of experience (completely undissected) and because of her feminine body parts.
That is a step backwards for feminism. I don't even want to think about the unfair race-bating. Does Steinem really believe that it is harder to be a white woman in America than a black man? (Gender as she discusses it in the article applies only to women of the white gender. Which is offensive). Also, has she ever visited a federal penitentiary? Is she honestly arguing that a candidate with more establishment ties to lobbyists, longer in Washington, the member of five senate committees, is really more of a threat to the Washington boys' club--solely because of her gender?
How also can she argue that Clinton has no masculinity to prove? Isn't that precisely the way all analysts have described Clinton's pro-war votes? If she isn't trying to prove her masculinity, is she voting her conscience alone that America should go to war and continue fighting a war in the morass that is Iraq? That only leads to more troubling questions about her conscience.
Feminism is about the life-long fight for justice. I don't know at times whether to read Mrs. Clinton's "35 years" as a life-long fight for justice or for personal power, but from the way she has waged her campaign so far, it seems to more and more strongly embody the latter.
It is for this reason, as a feminist, I consider her a black-eye for feminism, an embarrassment, and someone I cannot support, except from among the most odious of Republican options, for president.
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re: Pot calls kettle black: another simplistic narrative imposed on complex reality
excellent analysis. Rememeber when Obama didn't have a chance? I guess it became Clinton's time for dismissal.
The biggest problem with Clinton is how unlikable she really is. How she carpet bagged into NY on Bill's name, a guy who was treated to an incredible double standard by feminist Goddeses like Gloria Steinem while Clinton all the while pretended that ignoring Bill's ignoble behavior somehow served her purpose, or that philandering, while a personal matter, sure does make her look the sucker - but we weren't supposed to notice – and if we hit her on that, it was because she’s a woman – not a chump and a hanger on.
But that was then.
SHE ALSO voted for the war and the patriot act - TWICE - and then voted the Iranian Guard terrorists in an effort to bolster Bush’s war drums towards Iran. She's done nothing to raise noise on oversight of Republican corruption as regards the war, and, like anemic feminist disappointment, Nancy Peloisie, has given up on calling George Bush to a far more rational justice than served Bill Clinton.
It wouldn’t matter if I thought Obama had the political instinct that Hillary exhibits – but when he won – no matter how much I dislike Clinton, I was worried that it played EXACTLY into Warpublican hands…