Letters to the Editor
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Smith
Women are an important integral part of humanity, but I can't help think that you sound like a sort of sisterhood sepereratist, which is real exteme 70's sort of outlook.
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they're not my friends. they're my coworkers, and our job is being popular.
This discussion is reminding me, over and over again, that we live in a consumer culture, where marketing and branding account for so much of we see and say and do and are.
People seem to be relating to these candidates in much the same way as they relate to prestige brands. A car is a car, a handbag is a handbag. There are issues of aesthetics and quality and cost that come into play, but the cultural associations also affect our decisions w/r/t what we buy -- The People Who Like This Sort Of Thing, and how much we want to belong to that group, or how contemptuous of that group we are.
On some level, one can't be blamed for thinking of candidates as brands and their followers as branded "types", because the candidates themselves have embraced that rubric -- Hillary with her neat whiskey, Obama brushing "dirt" off his shoulders like Jay-Z tells us we should. That's the way things are these days. But as citizens -- as voters with an awesomely important job to do -- I'd venture that we are obligated to reject that stuff, even when our preferred "brands" tell us it's okay not to, to join a club or jeer at another club's members. Our beloved candidates are selling themselves short by promoting themselves this way, even though it seems to work beautifully for them.
I don't think we should buy into this. It demeans us and corrupts the process. Next time that thought crosses your mind -- "I don't like [x] because I don't like the people who like [x]" -- please, please give that impulse a second look. For all our sake. Whether it's about a political candidate, or a pair of shoes, or a sofa, or anything. Down that road madness lies.
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@ micro ms. -- Look at the comma!
Seriously, can anyone truly tell me that Clinton's "found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." comment doesn't smack of both classism and racism? Apparently, the only hard working Americans out there are now those who are white without college educations. I wish I'd known that earlier. Here I've been busting my ass, when I should be lying around drinking cappucino or something.
A comma divides the list that Clinton gives between the words "hard-working Americans" and "white Americans." She is not saying that hard-working Americans excludes black Americans. There are some black Americans who support Clinton. All she is doing is discussing demographics the way politicians always to. I haven't noticed you calling racism when Obama supporters point out that Obama is getting the overwhelming majority of black voters. This isn't racism. It's a simple fact. Both arguments are electability arguments and both sides have every right to make those arguments.
As to people without college educations, I wish more people would speak up for them instead of denigrating them. Their votes are just as important as those of college educated people. Clinton is not saying that people with college educations do not work hard. She is talking most probably about physical labor. She would know something about this since she once had a job cleaning fish (this is true!).
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@show me
You are entitled to your opinion, however, I find the lens through which you view the democratic primary race, and the candidates, remarkably myopic.
Your candidate and her husband are the ones who have played all of those foul play strategies you identify. Offense is a different position than defense. Check today's news.
Peace.
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AKA Smith channels Elizabeth Cady Stanton
AKA Smith channels Elizabeth Cady Stanton
AKA says: "You do understand that the feminist movement is designed to provide equal rights for women. Are you thrall to the delusion that women have achieved equal rights. That's what I meant by women first. When women achieve equal rights then I will worry more about men."
AKA - You can't treat such things as separate. I suggest you take a look at An Open Letter to the White Feminist Community, which specifically debunks using this to avoid dealing with racism, as have many women of color. http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/
AKA says: "You cannot quote a single racist statement from either Bill or Hillary Clinton."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-05-07-clintoninterview_N.htm
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."
Okay, how is equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans" not racist? Also, she's misrepresenting the poll results.
Frankly AKA you remind me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, now best known for being tarnished by her speech decrying the exclusion of women from the 15th Amendment.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/dubois/classes/995/98F/doc29.htm
It started well enough, with Stanton saying: "All artificial distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex, are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally destructive to national life and prosperity."
But alas she quickly reveals her white lady entitlement:
Will the foreign element, the dregs of China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all they know ? ...Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book, making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E. Dickinson...shall American statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the effete civilizations of the Old World?
This can't be excused as the ignorance of the times. Cady, an informed contemporary of Fredrick Douglas, starts by admitting "All artificial distinctions...are equally oppressive" then abandons this to rant about "political inferiors of unlettered and unwashed". In her fury she tries to pretend interwoven issues are mutually exclusive and becomes a hypocritical bigot.
You're kind of sounding the same AKA. Think about it.