Letters to the Editor
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I never thought I'd say this but GIVE Xrandadu Hutman A RED STAR!
The problem goes way beyond sexism alone.
Here's my experience in a time warp. I don't watch television. I mean like NEVER. It's mostly crap. However, when I was staying awhile with my mother who has dementia, I found reading was almost impossible because she interrupts and then forgets she interrupts. I confess my altruism in caring for her had its limits. At least I could watch television because it, with its commercial breaks, is designed for interruptions. Flipping around the various news stations I was astonished. I had not watched television since the year 2000. Who the hell was this Lou Dobbs who seemed to be a news anchor but was really some sort of obsessive over illegal immigration? Why was he being allowed such egregious editorialing. I flipped to CNN. All the female broadcasters had so much makeup on that they looked like street walkers. Wolf Blizter had grown a beard and grown insufferably pretentious. FOX? OMG! There was a station called MSNBC where Chris Matthews was still yelling. The last time I saw him, he was yelling on the McLaughlin Group, not letting poor Eleanor Clift get a word in edgewise.
Where have all the journalists gone? Where are the respectable news anchors? They weren't there. Naturally, I became addicted to CSI and ended up whining to my mother, "Please just let me watch the Y-incision on this breast-augmented dead body!"
Has it occured to anyone that maybe we just don't need to fill that much air time with 24-7 news? Hardball is actually Hardcopy for political junkies. Just how much inane gossip do we really need? Even here at Salon?
Maybe Garry Owen is right. Go out and actually investigate something. The world is teetering on the brink. Instead of hard news, we get stuff little more substantive than some starlet exiting a limosine onto a red carpet.
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shuster
I agree with you up until the whole thing about msnbc deliberately going after Hillary. I also think the Clintons try to keep this alive for their own political reasons. It's such a non-issue and yet it is. American blacks and women are ripe for feeling dissed in this political season, understandably. People need to proceed with caution.
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bears repeating again and again....
In the War Room thread on this very topic, I posted the following comment, to draw attention to one of the best comments there...
bears repeating....
Pimps and Whores
Given the behavior of the media over the last seven years, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that so many media figures simply don't understand why "whore" is generally considered to be an insult.
-- Hippodameia
and repeating...
Pimps and Whores
Given the behavior of the media over the last seven years, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that so many media figures simply don't understand why "whore" is generally considered to be an insult.
-- Hippodameia
and repeating...
Pimps and Whores
Given the behavior of the media over the last seven years, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that so many media figures simply don't understand why "whore" is generally considered to be an insult.
-- Hippodameia
We've all heard that learning requires repetition... perhaps someone at MSNBC-- or any of the other miserable news networks for that matter-- is reading here right now. We can only hope...
* * *
And on Greenwald's blog I had to note as an aside that Koppelman concluded his post with reactions only from those who were defending Shuster... none who were speaking for Clinton's side. Very interesting... Yes, I still miss Tim Grieve.
In a way, though, this whole thing is kind of pathetic. Given the low opinion the frat boys at MSNBC have of women in general, and HRC in particular, you'd think they'd want more challenging targets for their vitriol. But, maybe we've been blind to the existence of our own leftist versions of the chickenhawks that we like to mock on the right. Ours may look slightly more manly, but their rhetoric says otherwise.
It is heartening, though, to read all of the comments from men and from Obama supporters who clearly recognize the misogyny at MSNBC, in spite of their "rep" for better political reporting than that available at Fox and CNN.
Joan, I don't know how you can bear to put up with all of that crap when you appear on MSNBC, but more power to you. It is important that they and their audience have an opportunity to see a smart woman in their midst on occasion.
Also... my understanding of the word "fluffer" was the same as Treepler's, and dates from a time when I worked in a design center. Guess I'm too old to be hip, since I didn't know the other connotation, and actually old enough to take offense at the pervasive and insidious abuse of terms about women's sexuality to insult and demean. Clinton was not just defending her own daughter, but all of our daughters. I have one, too, just slightly older than Chelsea.
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Cydne35150, it is the word "unseemly" in conjunction with ...
the word pimped out that give the whoring, sexual connotation to his use of the term "pimped out." It proofs that he did not merely reach for a phrase from popular culture that could be applied to cars. No, he definitely meant us to leap to a meme of prostitution. He needed to be fully admitted to the club house. It's sort of a blood brothers rite of passage. If you are not misogynistic toward women, you aren't really part of the club.
Joan will never qualify. She thinks fluffing means pillows or something. So did I. People forget that not everyone lives in a porn world, a world whose boundaries are expanding to invade our daily lives.
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My T.V. is Off.
I mean, really, what are my choices?
I can watch Murdoch's goons on Faux (yeah, right) — the unctuous Wolf Blitzer and the misanthropic Lou Dobbs on CNN (sorry, I don't get my news from a guy with an American flag pin in his lapel) — or the 13-year-old boys on MSNBC.
Thank God for the Internet and for that faithful old standby, the newspaper.
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"correctly"??? Let's not put words in Obama's mouth, shall we?
many people have noted correctly that Shuster might never work in television again had he used "pimped out" to refer to Michelle Obama or the couple's cherished daughters.
Oh PLEASE. The difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is that Obama would commented on it ONCE and let it go, trying to put it all behind him and move on to SUBSTANTIVE MATTERS. Clinton on the other hand, sees it as another chance to score "umbrage points" with the electorate, so her campaign is bizarrely trying to milk it for all -- for more than -- it's worth.