Letters to the Editor
-
fluffers?!?
Did you really mean to use such a crass word for Obama's alleged media supporters? I would assume a writer of your caliber would be a little more careful with words. Please be more careful.
Here's the main wikipedia entry on "fluffing" and "fluffers":
"A fluffer is a hired member of the crew of a pornographic movie whose role on the set is to sexually arouse the male participants prior to the filming of scenes requiring erections. The term was also extended to include female participants. Many adult film stars today maintain that fluffers are a thing of the past, needed in the '70s and '80s when the crew, shooting on celluloid, needed much more time to prepare a shot. Erectile dysfunction drugs such as Viagra have also taken part in replacing fluffers.
Brittany Andrews states on her website that fluffers are now utilized only in "gang bang" scenarios. David Gordon of Camp Appleton uses fluffers in every movie he directs — he reportedly once had 14 fluffers in the green room of his 1987 movie titled 'Where's My Fluffer?'.
A "fluffer" in photo and film also had the duty of keeping the adult film stars "cleaned up", in between takes or during photo shoot set-ups, so the actors/posers, do not have to move from their positions. The duties are considered part of the makeup department. After getting the desired angle, the director has the actors hold position, and calls for the fluffer to "fluff" the actors for the shot."
-
Lots of room for both sides to improve
The bottom line is that Clinton and Obama both have clear areas where their respective campaigns are still vulnerable, and have their work cut out for them.
So far both candidates have shown that they can adapt quickly and fairly creatively to shifting circumstances, and more importantly that they appear to keep their own counsel rather than listen to the press (or their own more irascible supporters).
So the real question is, will Obama lose control of his campaign in the runup to the convention? (Or, for that matter, will Clinton lose control of hers?) So far there's no sign of slippage from either candidate — if anything they both appear to be tightening ship, with Clinton retrenching financially and Obama likely to retool to improve his appeal to Latino Americans.
If they keep it up, who knows? All those Edwards and Kucinich supporters might get to decide the race after all.
-
Walsh minimizes "the check."
According to the Clintons, they wrote a check to their own campaign of five million dollars. Compare that to the 14 million they raised in January and you'll understand the magnitude of "the check." The Clintons say they would spend up to 20 million on the campaign from their net worth of over 34 million.
Why does Walsh choose to minimize "the check"? Walsh would rather focus our attention on relatively minor media slights (like the New Hampshire "tears" story) and have us pretend that this sort of media attention is something other than free advertising for the Clintons. Her "critical" approach to Obama seems never to go more than skin deep. Newsflash: Obama is multiracial.
"Follow the money" is always a good idea in journalism. The media have pursued Obama regarding Rezko for a real estate deal in the thousands and regarding Exelon for contributions in the tens of thousands. Fair enough. But, why do Walsh and the rest of the elite media give the Clintons a free pass?
By their own account, the Clintons were broke when they left the White House. Much of their money was given to them in the last five years by the global corporate elite, contributors from Dubai to Munich to Hong Kong, in exchange for speeches and sitting on corporate boards. The Clintons are end-running campaign contribution limits and introducing a large dose of foreign capital into a US campaign for president. It's not enough that foreigners own our debt; now they own our electoral system. As recently as this past December, Bill Clinton himself acknowledged it would be wrong to use their personal fortune this way.
Walsh avoids the issue because it undercuts the elite media's argument that the Clintons are for the lower class and Obama is for "latte liberals." In reality, the Clintons' de facto campaign contributors are the very global elites who have profited from the Clinton globalization at the expense of American workers.
-
Obama's Supporters
I like Obama enough but his supporters disgust me. It is starting to turn me against him. Also his made a comment I cannot forgive her for . She said "She didn't know if she could support Hillary in the general ". WTF?. Maybe that's where his supporters get their republican traits from ?. I no longer go to Daily (kos) Obama or The Anti Clinton (Huffington) post. His supporters are really starting to turn me off politics. As far as the traditional media goes , I know they hate the Clintons, and no lie is to outrageous to spread about either of the Clintons.
-
MSNBC
My sister,a Republican Hillary supporter, has switched back to watching Fox News because she can't listen to the constant bashing on MSNBC. She says at least Fox is halfway fair.
-
Obama's "superiority"
"Obvious moral and political superiority"? Have you looked at his job record, or lack of it? What superiority? And what a telling phrase for Walsh to cast off so casually here. Superiority? In the decades that Hillary Clinton was actually enacting real and important (and thankless) public policy, Obama was drifting. His accomplishments to date are/is a wildly over-rated convention speech that anybody could have made and a campaign that is so bolstered by a biased media that even many fervent supporters are beginning to show embarrassment. His allegedly stellar record is a whole-cloth invention of a media class that is acting out some hackneyed, self-indulgent melodrama of (multi)racial/black racial superiority which relies, heavily and unforgivably offensively, on accusations that merely supporting Clinton for any reason is a vote for racial hatred. See, for example, virtually anything in Salon (with the exception of Glenn Greenwald), Maureen Dowd's increasingly unstable screeds, the histrionics of Michael Chabon, who actually writes that pulling the lever for Clinton makes one suspect of racist intentions, and the faces of political analysts who have forgotten that this is a presidential election, not some referendum on who can care the most about (punitive) nostrums of "racial healing." Ironically, Obama had much more credibility as a "uniter" before the (almost exclusively white and elite) press shoved their fantasies of "healing" in our faces. Those of us who came of age in the 80's and have been force-fed decades of so-called "tolerance" and "racial sensitivity" re-education in our workplaces, where we simultaneously watched affirmative action simply create a new elite, have seen this all before, and frankly, we're sick of it. I know (because I work with them) I speak for an awful lot of non-racist, socially conscientious Democratic voters when I say that I cannot support Obama at this point UNTIL he renounces and distances himself from this offensive, hysterically "adoring/punishing" behavior on the part of the press. Otherwise, he is part of the problem such media has created, and since he has virtually nothing other than an image of being a "uniter" going for him, he cannot possibly survive Republican scrutiny of both his negative history (which all candidates possess, even Salon's patron saint) and his non-existent record (hint: in the world outside these pages, most people don't care all that much about Harvard pedigrees and law review memberships, let alone nebulous "community organizer" stints, and the rest of Obama's slight career frankly smacks of the types of elitist, elementally divisive, affirmative action perks that the non-privileged portion of our generation cannot afford to continually endorse).
You may not like hearing this, but if you really believe Obama is the best candidate, telling me I had better kow-tow to anybody's "superiority" for the alleged good of my soul is a stellar-ly crappy way to secure my vote.